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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26662306">Shooting Star: a Maverick Hunter Story</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_C_D/pseuds/J_C_D'>J_C_D</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rockman X | Mega Man X, Rockman | Mega Man - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alcohol, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Killer Robots, Maverick Hunters, Robot Feels, Robots, Rockman X4 | Mega Man X4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 11:35:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>183,311</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26662306</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_C_D/pseuds/J_C_D</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Meteor Showa, a fire-breathing Maverick Hunter koi reploid, nearly dies in the line of duty against Repliforce.</p><p>She must build herself back up to her old strength even as the remnants of the Repliforce War still trouble the world.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Mission 0: Bahamas Outpost</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the final days of what seemed like the war to end all wars, the rebellious reploid army Repliforce captured the aptly-named orbital artillery station Final Weapon. The news shot through the ranks of the only organization capable of stopping Repliforce, the Maverick Hunters – the internationally acclaimed fighters for everlasting peace, the paramilitary force directed by a United Nations oversight council, the renowned group of hostile-reploid-slayers that never intended to grow as large or as powerful as it was. The most elite of the Hunters prepared to pursue their foes beyond the sky, recalling heroism not seen since the Doppler War. However, the drama playing out far above the Earth did not preclude the problems yet to be solved on the ground.</p><p>Repliforce wasn’t called “the most powerful army in history” for show. Though damaged by months of war, its legions still remained, scrambling to take and hold what they still could as their leadership prepared their final solution for independence. Troops still marched and swam and flew. The world still needed the help of Maverick Hunter officers, hard-pressed and thinly-spread though they were.</p><p>One such Hunter eyed her destination on the holo-globe floating above the command table. Reploids were built in all shapes and sizes, of course, unbound by the basics of a human frame; her size was large and her shape was stout. She was a stylized koi fish on legs, her thick and round-edged body deftly balanced yet standing with a permanent hunch.</p><p>“Nassau?” She asked. At the bottom of her sloping noseless face, the corners of her wide mouth ended in little barbels to complete the fish aesthetic.</p><p>“Just outside of it,” the stern and matronly voice of her unit’s second-in-command replied from the map. “Two hours ago a full platoon equipped with multiple ride armors took over a Twelfth Tropical outpost. You know the one, Meteor. Sweep it clean. Repliforce is hitting spaceports to link up with General and we can’t let them have a toehold so close to Space Coast.”</p><p>“Yes Ma’am,” Meteor replied.</p><p>“They’ve already cut the receivers, so I’m clearing you for a hot drop. Good hunting.”</p><p>The voice-only comm cut out, leaving Meteor alone in the room. Every other officer of the base’s 4<sup>th</sup> Overland Unit contingent was out taking care of their own far-flung tasks. The war kept them busy, passing like ships in the night if they were ever on base at the same time. A Hunter’s work was never done.</p><p>She stepped onto a circular warp pad, one of two set off to the side of the room. Her size presented no problem, though she still bent her thick, segmented tail to fit the pad’s diameter – just for the neatness of it. The exotic physics of spatial compression and transmission were practically mundane in their safety. Even humans could teleport via warp. Still, leaving bits outside the circle if one could avoid it was just sloppy.</p><p>She keyed in her destination. She vanished into a column of warped space, white and black and red-orange to match her coloration.</p><p>As fast as human eyes could see, the thin packet of all her contiguous matter shot from the city of Veracruz across the Caribbean Sea. She felt no discomfort; the sensation was as harmless as zero-gravity.</p><p>The beam arced out of a yellowing sky and struck cracked pavement, jolting her with force as the dissipating warp field re-introduced her to more humble everyday physics. She found herself on a peripheral atoll between the light cover of artificial palm trees and a semicircle of six anti-aircraft towers – two fallen, three upright and smoking.</p><p>Her arrival came as a surprise to the Repliforce soldiers by the remaining functional tower. They were the rankest of the rank and file, two short round reploids – Knot Berets – and an entourage of four <em>mets</em>, Mettaur D2s, semi-intelligent combat irritants which looked like nothing so much as walking helmets.</p><p>The surprise passed quickly. The round bronze grunts of Repliforce each snapped a grenade off their sides. Three of the mets fell into line formation while the fourth chattered in unintelligible signal noise, a tiny radio attached to its helmet blinking rapidly.</p><p>Meteor rolled her neck. It took a second, as she had a lot of it.</p><p>
  
</p><p>“Already?” She sighed.</p><p>The grunts lobbed their grenades. The walking helmets aimed their endearing little faces and spat pellets of electromagnetically-compressed plasma.</p><p>Meteor crossed her arms in front of her and engaged her “dash” – her Emergency Acceleration System. Propulsive bursts of plasma from the soles of her boots shot her forward faster than any fish had a right to travel on land. The hilts of two beam sabers ejected from her wrists into her waiting hands and ignited, each a meter-long blade of highly-compressed plasma – red, for aesthetics. With one broad sweep of both arms she hit the line of mettaurs broadside and carved them apart. The grenades exploded far behind her as her diminutive foes exploded around her.</p><p>She halted, pivoted, engaged her secondary <em>EAS</em> burst and went for the Knot Berets. She simply held her sabers out to either side of her body and neatly bisected the soldiers at their equators as she rocketed past. They exploded without a fuss.</p><p>“What a waste.” Meteor clicked off her beam sabers and stowed them back in the red-orange cuffs of her white forearm armor to recharge. Her right hand lifted to touch her circular “ear” cap while her left hand disappeared into her forearm.</p><p>“Meteor Showa reporting on-site,” she spoke aloud. “Retired token peripheral presence.”</p><p>The empty cuff of her left arm produced a flying fish – a mechaniloid <em>showa</em> koi, a drone under her command that shared her colors and looked rather more like a fish than she did. Her field of vision expanded to include what its eyes saw. A second one flew out to join it, adding complexity to her channels of perception. The modern wonders of <em>LIFE</em> cold-fusion energy and <em>WEAPON</em> ion-anchoring templates made many such miracles commonplace.</p><p>“Defense atoll’s a loss,” she continued. “Smoke’s coming from the main island. Heading there in a sec. Out.”</p><p>Her left hand slid back into place. It was unlikely that anyone in the 5<sup>th</sup> Communications Unit heard her, given the state of the war taxing Hunter personnel and automated navigation guidance alike. Her signal likely sat in someone’s queue. It still made sense to send periodic reports, in order to be thorough and establish a record for later referral. She was just that kind of person.</p><p>One fish drone air-swam around the blasted gun towers while the other darted through the trees to scout ahead to the beach Meteor knew was there. Meteor herself pressed on, the smoke from the broken guns dissipating. Back in the day, she knew a few of the old-model Steel Beret reploids who would half-heartedly man the turrets against foes who never came. Her drones read no active energy signatures, hostile or otherwise, but she shouted just to make sure.</p><p>“Diggs? Goldie? Miranda?”</p><p>She stepped around a fallen tower and found a dead Steel Beret, his torso crushed by the tower itself. The stillness in his eyes showed his LIFE cell had expired without the drama of a failsafe explosion, meaning he had time to think before the end. She didn’t recognize him, but spared a moment to bow her head and respectfully clap twice.</p><p>On the second clap her scouting koi’s vision broke into a flash of static followed by oblivion. [Drone Lost], her systems told her. <em>Great</em>.</p><p>She left the ruin and ran to the beach. Another mettaur made signaling noises by her downed drone. Her right hand vanished into her arm and a squat cannon muzzle, known the world over as a <em>buster</em>, took its place. The tiny Repliforce soldier noticed her too late; Meteor perforated it from the side with a plasma round. It expired with the typical overload of its miniature LIFE cell, littering the sand with bits of metal and too-thin-to-matter ceratanium.</p><p>Meteor grunted in annoyance. She liked that beach. She once made out on that beach. During her six-month stint at the outpost in more peaceful days, off-duty Hunters and day-tripping government officials seldom bothered to come out to the atoll, so it was effectively all hers whenever she wanted to have some quiet or host a friend. Now all it hosted was one more scattering of junk. Her commander had said to sweep the place clean, but her entire line of work was making more litter.</p><p>“Heck,” she swore.</p><p>The mettaur’s backup sloshed out of the sea.</p><p>“<em>Heck!</em>” She swore harder.</p><p>A hulking maroon body, larger than her, dripped with seawater as it stomped onto the sand. Sturdy legs supported strong arms and a hollow torso in which a higher-spec Repliforce soldier, a Standard Beret, sat and piloted, exposed from the shoulders up. Meteor knew the vehicle instantly: a Raiden-model <em>ride armor</em>. Raidens were the surprisingly agile mass-production brawlers developed by Repliforce; in the right hands they were supposedly equal to any officer of the 14<sup>th</sup> Grapple Unit. An exact duplicate waded out behind it, rider and all.</p><p>The first rider deftly moved his ride armor’s arm to knuckle-tap his comrade’s.</p><p>“Hey, hey, that’s the Fire Fish!”</p><p>He didn’t sound like a fan. Repliforce had simple nicknames for notable Hunters like her.</p><p>“I am.” A hum rose in her throat, quite apart from her voice. “You know what I can do. Stand down and submit to capture.”</p><p>The Raiden-riders engaged their vehicles’ EAS dash boosts, kicking up fountains of sand and sun-sparkling water. High-phase beam blades lit out of the backs of the Raidens’ fists.</p><p>“Fine,” Meteor sighed, shifting her right hand out of her buster arm.</p><p>The first Raiden came for her head-on, fists chambered and arms tight to its sides, meaning one of two possible strikes from either arm. Meteor calculated, waited for the tell of the torso-turn, and popped out her beam sabers. She dug in her heels, parried the giant fist with her left blade and thrust her right one into the Raiden’s center of gravity. The massive ride armor only pushed her smaller armored bulk, trenching her legs and tail into the sand even as its life-saving shields flashed. It swung its left fist to close the pincer, but Meteor moved her right blade to parry it as well.</p><p>She held the position, arms out and straining two clashes of plasma blades, half-buried in her favorite beach, when the second Raiden closed the distance on a curving path.</p><p>Meteor smirked. The energy-compression hum in her throat reached a crescendo.</p><p>Sand exploded as her EAS engaged, the soles of her boots and every vent on her tail blasting her straight up. The boost wasn’t nearly as impressive as it would have been underwater, but it was more than enough to slip past the Raiden’s fist-blades and let their knuckles meet with a clang. The second Raiden swung and missed its drive-by blow.</p><p>She hung in the air a breathless instant. She tipped her head down at the first Raiden. She parted her lips.</p><p>She vomited thermite onto the ride armor’s pilot.</p><p>He had only an instant to experience the cascade of bright molten aluminum and phosphorus, built up to maximum heat and fineness of particle size, before Meteor herself landed, adding bludgeoning mass and the stab of two high-phase beam sabers to the damage. The pilot and his ride both began exploding, their shield batteries no match for such trauma.</p><p>Meteor leapt off the expiring hulk as the second Raiden skidded on the sand to turn around. She stowed her sabers, mentally shifted a setting in her throat, and calculated the skid trajectory. She spat a grenade the size of a human fist. It arced and landed perfectly in the second pilot’s cockpit, splashing yet more thermite over him and his controls. He screamed as the attack welded him to his seat, the flash of his feeble mass-production shields not enough to repel the liquid metal.</p><p>Meteor strolled over the sand as her foe flailed and flashed. She built a charge in her buster arm to maximum compression. Decompression flared it out like a yellow comet. Between the electromagnetic and thermal shear of its impact and the aggressive burning of sensitive components, the ride armor and rider both went up in a chain of explosions.</p><p>Yet more litter. Her annoyance sublimated into anger. She was built for dealing with wreckage, but the world had quite enough of that already. The best she could do was minimize it by barreling ahead to whichever ranking Repliforce officer had dared to invade.</p><p>Meteor touched her earcap. “Delayed. Proceeding to main island.”</p><p>Her remaining koi drone swam to her side, somewhat tardy. It placidly orbited her, awaiting direction. She pet it, just because.</p><p>She dashed down the beach and leapt into the sparkling sheet of pre-sunset sea. The shallows gave way to the deep and the series of micro-jets in her tail took over. She jetted over the area’s artificial reefs, which were pseudo-mechanical acid-remediating riots of color that clung to collapsed buildings in the hopes of someday sheltering more than a fraction of what used to live there. The Caribbean was full of them, for want of native coral. Meteor hated not having the time to appreciate them fully.</p><p>She produced a second koi drone to keep her first one company and followed the sea floor down. It wasn’t terribly deep, but she was glad for the distance as a drone registered two Eagle ride armors not far above the surface. They passed overhead, probably flying out to intercept her last position. <em>Hah</em>. Her flash of smugness evaporated when her drones reported three reploids her size skimming the reefs towards her. They were King Poseidon models, sea-colored humanoids with huge back fins. <em>Repliforce sure came equipped</em>, she thought. She designated her opponents A, B, and C, and sicced her drones on them.</p><p>King Poseidon A made a spike-shooting buzzsaw spin at Meteor’s fish, but they were too nimble. Each koi spat a cutting laser, repeatedly carving into A’s frame on erratic paths and ensuring its attention was focused on them. B and C swam straight for Meteor, igniting beam spines on their trident weapons.</p><p>Meteor calmly readied her buster for something special.</p><p>Maverick Hunters were paid for their work in many ways, but no reward was as coveted or charismatic as WEAPON data. A reploid’s <em>DNA</em> – Dynamic Neural Array – contained all that a reploid was, including the unique or hard-adapted offensive and defensive capabilities of their anatomy. Mavericks who required Hunter response to neutralize were commonly armed with powerful WEAPON data that fueled their rampages. The Hunters who brought them down had the rare right to adapt it (within certain regulations) to make themselves better at hunting the next Maverick, and the next, and the next. Meteor’s career had allowed her to fill her arsenal to the brim. She mentally opened her four-slot Variable Weapon Emulation System – the highest-capacity <em>VWES</em> available to all but the most super-elite Hunters – and selected an entry named <em>Star Salvo.</em></p><p>Meteor fired a barrage of small missiles, two at a time, from her buster. They orbited each other on their high-speed paths, shooting in streams like fireworks and bursting brightly after a set distance. King Poseidon B attempted evasion but the circus of streaming missiles from a deft swimmer like Meteor caught up and destroyed him. C, lacking the sapience to care about its fallen comrade, swam for Meteor and spun its trident to swat down Star Salvo missiles on its interception course. She solved that problem with a left-handed sabering, boiling the water as her red blade passed through the mechaniloid’s weapon and then its chest. As C’s LIFE cell failed, King Poseidon A exploded as well, going down stabbing at the koi drones with about as much success as punching bees.</p><p>“Showa again,” she commed into Veracruz Fifth’s queue. “Anybody got eyes on this group’s C.O. yet? Atajo? Adelita?”</p><p>No one responded. Showa swam along a reefless expanse of seafloor, arms to her sides to decrease drag as tiny fragments of former enemy drifted down.</p><p>Her eyes followed the debris. Her gaze settled on more debris in the distance.</p><p>She would have known that reticulated seafoam-green armor anywhere.</p><p>She slowed her swim. Before her lay the scattered remains of the outpost commander, Aqua Kelpie. Broken fins and a severed hoof lay among miscellaneous pieces of frame. In her brief experience he had been a workaholic, putting forth unnecessarily intensive efforts for such a sinecure of a job. Nobody needed to do twice-daily drills on a tropical island within vehicle-commuting distance of one of the world’s most secure spaceports, but he did. He took his position seriously. Meteor greatly respected that about him. Even if it would delay the mission, the on-duty Hunter decided that the late commander deserved better in defeat than an unceremonious dumping at sea.</p><p>Reploids generally took their culture from humans, but rites for dead – “retired” – reploids varied immensely. Meteor felt that any sutra would sound insincere coming from her, but a secular moment of silence felt insufficient as well. She instead relied on a few lines from a long-dead author she adored, one Terry Pratchett, edited a little for the sake of solemnity.</p><p>“Flames died,” she began. “Sound died. Light died. Anghammarad looked at his hands. There was nothing there except heat, furnace heat, blasting heat that nevertheless made the shape of fingers. ‘I have lost my clay,’ said the golem. YES, said Death,” Meteor lowered her voice for the role, “THAT IS STANDARD. YOU ARE DEAD. ‘Then who is this doing the listening?’ EVERYTHING THERE WAS ABOUT YOU THAT ISN'T CLAY.”</p><p>Her koi drones, ever alert, still registered that she was safely alone. Emotion crept into her recital.</p><p>“‘Do you have a command for me?’ said the remains of Anghammarad, standing up. NO, said Death. YOU HAVE REACHED THE PLACE WHERE THERE ARE NO MORE ORDERS. Anghammarad sat down again. GENERALLY PEOPLE LIKE TO MOVE ON, Death hinted. THEY LOOK FORWARD TO AN AFTERLIFE. ‘I will stay here, please.’ HERE? THERE'S NOTHING TO DO HERE, said Death. ‘Yes, I know,’ said the ghost of the golem. ‘It is perfect. I am free.’”</p><p>No reploid had ever died of old age. Hunters knew this intimately. Meteor’s outlook on the realities of the job and the nature of her kind was the melancholy of a historian, but she wore alternating layers of kindness and professionalism over it like armor. She bowed her head, clapped twice, let silence have its moment, and then touched part of the scrapped torso armor.</p><p>“Take care, Kelpie.”</p><p>Upon such close inspection, Meteor noticed the nature of his fatal injuries: cuts so clean as to only be from high-velocity, solid-mass edged weapons. He was carved.</p><p>She left him behind, fists clenched. The sea had darkened further with the setting sun.</p><p>Both drones alerted her to multiple incoming missiles incoming from the darker waters ahead. She ordered them off and they sped past her. Flashes of thin laser lines in the deep blue distance preceded bursts of popped missiles making a brief constellation. In her heads-up display, fists broke through the explosions and cut her contact.</p><p>[Drone Lost]. [Drone Lost].</p><p>“Hmph.”</p><p>Three dark shadows clarified out of the distance. Meteor recognized their silhouettes as yet more ride armors, Sea Lions this time: one arm a Raiden fist, the other a compact twin Frog-class homing missile launcher. They began fanning out. She leveled her buster and prepared to fire more Star Salvo, but her bare senses detected objects entering the water above.</p><p>She glanced up. Thought fast. Elongated missiles, seven- and five-o’clock high. Eagle-class ordinance. Sea Lions at eleven, twelve, and one, mid-depth to her low – and spreading.</p><p>She was surrounded by five different ride armors. Her commander was right to send her.</p><p>Meteor jetted to nine-o’clock and kept her depth steady. The Sea Lions instantly gave chase and opened fire with two homing missiles each as more Eagle missiles splashed into the scene at a corrected angle. She was fast, but the projectiles were faster, and catching up.</p><p>She switched her VWES out of Star Salvo. Sparks flared off the barbels at the edges of her mouth. The edge of the missile volley neared.</p><p>To say her most powerful weapon made her spit lightning was to undersell if not insult the cacophonous buzz of doom that roared from the blinding white beam she fired from her mouth. It boiled the water, slashed through the barrage of missiles and treated the shields and armor of the Sea Lions like they were bubbles. The beam stopped with its pre-set duration. Meteor turned her head up and fired again while swimming, her long beam blasting through the surface. One hovering ride armor took it head-on; the other tried to flee, but the ultra-high-intensity electric beam slashed through the waves and cut it down. Their parts rained unceremoniously into the sea.</p><p>Meteor wiped her heatproof lips with an armored cuff. Exhalation Beam had only half its energy to go. Shooting the room-clearer through her unspecialized charge buster would have broken it, but her mouth was built to handle such high heat.</p><p>“Showa to Fifth. Seven ride armors down. How many were in the platoon?”</p><p>Once again she received no reply. Such was wartime, she thought – but surely even an automated message would have returned by now.</p><p>Guarded, she approached the shore of the main island and waded out like fast-forwarded evolution. The outpost was a humble building with lots of windows, only three square floors on elevated ground.</p><p>Her foes stood between her and the building.</p><p>A Standard Beret clapped slowly and sarcastically, perched atop the cockpit rim of a Sea Lion G – a custom model with a large physical shield on its Raiden arm. The Standard was a naval-type, blue-trimmed white armor with square pauldrons of higher rank. Two snub-nosed shoulder cannons, nearly mortars, hung slung back from his officer’s epaulettes. The setting sun glinted off the secondary shield-projector crystals at the corners of his collar. A yellow – blonde? – chinstrap beard-plate framed his confident smile.</p><p>Six Knot Berets and twice as many Mettaur D2s were on the field as well, patiently lining up shots on Meteor from what cover their flatbed landing vehicles provided.</p><p>“Well well,” the officer patronized, “so they sent the Fire Fish of Veracruz. A fellow Captain – not that you Hunters see rank as more than just your pay grade.”</p><p>“My name is Meteor Showa,” Meteor shouted back. “And you are?”</p><p>He cracked a salute off his white cap. “Captain Decim of the Repliforce Navy! This outpost is now under my management. I’d tell you to get lost, but you’ve killed too many of us to let you go!”</p><p>“And <em>you</em> killed everybody I knew here!”</p><p>“The garbage of history,” he sneered. “Debris on the road toward a world for reploids.”</p><p>Meteor began charging her buster. “Not the first enemy I’ve heard that from.”</p><p>“What, no <em>Die, Maverick Scum?</em>” Decim laughed. “What sort of Hunter <em>are</em> you, Captain Showa?”</p><p>“One who knows the difference between legitimate monsters and a terrorist marching band that thinks it invented history.” She raised her buster. “Stand down, Captain Decim.”</p><p>Decim hopped down into his seat.</p><p>Meteor calculated as the lesser enemies opened fire.</p><p>She let her charged shot fly at Decim’s ride and immediately switched her variable weapon to <em>Smoke Spike</em>. The barrage rained on her position and small plasma shots popped against her armor as she dashed to the nearest amphibious landing vehicle. She strafed as she went, firing diamond-shaped canisters that stuck their pointy ends in the ground, the pavement, and the sides of two landers, holding fast and spraying smoke that settled low like fog. Meteor leapt onto a lander, saber-slashed the Knot Beret hiding behind it and fired two more spiky gas-cans where it had stood.</p><p>The Sea Lion G dashed for her and uppercutted the lander head-on.</p><p>Meteor went for a half-second ride before dashing off and peppering the ground with yet more smoke-billowing spikes. A lucky Knot Beret’s grenade caught her in mid-flight. In the span of mere nanoseconds her systems registered the impact event; her shield battery strobed a nigh-invulnerable surface of force and exotic energy over the skin of her armor to mitigate the damage of the rest of the hit. It still hurt.</p><p>She fired her secondary dash, giving her enough air time to land in a fogless portion of increasingly foggy ground. The gas began to pay off. Its corrosive effect made the dozen mettaurs, completely submerged and occluded, begin to run around in panic as damage rapidly accumulated. Knot Berets sought higher ground as Decim sped for her.</p><p>His shoulder cannons were flipped forward and his Raiden arm chambered to swing. She heard the telltale whine of compressing energy – much faster than her own buster was capable of. Worst of all, her dash system was still cycling back up to usable, leaving her limited to foot speed.</p><p>The base clock speed of reploid cognition was, famously, no faster than a human’s. Fortunately Meteor had enough experience to calculate tactics at the speed of synapse, as good as the very best human war-fighters.</p><p>She opened her mouth and spat a glob of thermite, cueing Decim to abort the punch and bring up his shield. Meteor ran as it splatted, burning ineffectually against the flashing layer of energy and durable armor – but with the shield raised, she jumped and clung to it with her left arm. Her right arm swung up to the cockpit, buster aimed, as Decim fired two colossal blasts of compressed plasma from his shoulders.</p><p>They vanished from sight upon leaving his buster barrels.</p><p>Meteor enjoyed the spark of bafflement on his face as her EAS cycled up. She launched vertically off his shield and shot two drones from her left arm before landing, facing Decim’s back in a tiny makeshift arena ringed by smoke. She switched back to Smoke Spike and tagged his ride in the leg.</p><p>Decim swung his ride around, rapid-charged his cannons and released a different barrage: tens of smaller plasma balls rather than the two big ones. Meteor switched weapons back and aimed her buster. The shots vanished once they reached the invisible cone of her <em>Sun Thief</em>, shredding their electromagnetic envelopes and washing her with the light warm breeze of what had been destructive plasma.</p><p>Decim grit his teeth and employed the missiles on his ride’s right arm, but Meteor’s dashing propelled her big frame like a minnow. Still she skirted the edge of the fog. Decim capitalized on her movement and kept her distant with rocket fire as Knot Berets that found higher ground lined up their shots to assist their boss.</p><p>Meteor spat a fragment of burning metal into the fog.</p><p>The battlefield ignited.</p><p>Heavily-corroded mets and lightly-corroded grunts and even the landing vehicles caught fire. The wavefront of flame reached the opposite side of the arena – where a trail of thick smoke led straight to Decim’s ride armor. Its leg caught fire, flashing the whole vehicle’s shields.</p><p>Decim dashed yet again, closing on Meteor and swinging his Sea Lion’s melee arm to try and tag her with its fist blade. Meteor ducked under and beam sabered the gas-weakened, flame-licked leg, biting hard into its shield battery’s capacity as it warded off what would have been a maiming blow. The vehicle auto-corrected, favoring balancing on its remaining leg even as Decim flailed its big arms to try and hit the Hunter.</p><p>Meteor’s drones returned that moment, lasering him directly in the cockpit, tracing each other’s laser paths for deeper cuts that triggered his shields to flash. Uncharged shots vulcaned from his shoulder cannons, missing the darting fish by millimeters.</p><p>“Are you just going to watch?!” Decim bellowed to the sky.</p><p>“Why not?” Meteor stowed her saber. “I always did like fireworks.”</p><p>The flames snuffed out, the Smoke Spike generators finally expiring under the heat. Meteor took that as her cue. Out came both sabers, and the scissor-cross slash propelled by her dash cut into her foe’s middle.</p><p>The ride armor’s shields from rapid strobe to slow blink. It was a visual death rattle. LIFE cells were, after all, cold-fusion reactors; a key function of a shield battery was to shield <em>everyone else</em> from a fusion explosion, however rare the likelihood. The same device that, at higher strengths, gave the famous brief blink of conventional invincibility could also self-destruct the body that carried it, registering what would be a fatal cell rupture and instead causing a failsafe that took the form of a dramatic chain of explosions.</p><p>Decim attempted to bail out, but the explosions threw him free. Meteor watched the brief fireworks, her fish orbiting her head like a halo.</p><p>The Repliforce Captain rose to one knee, electricity sparking over his blast-scorched armor.</p><p>“You have no idea what’s coming,” he warned, defiant in the face of her charging buster.</p><p>“No,” she took aim, “but I have a pretty good idea of who’s going.”</p><p>She fired. Decim made his escape in a column of light and warped mass.</p><p>“Shoot,” she cursed. She tapped her ear. “Showa to—”</p><p>She stopped at the sound of approaching whirring.</p><p>She fired her dash. Two spinning blades carved into the ground and stuck fast. They looked like thin past-century aircraft propellers.</p><p>Meteor skidded on her heels and brought up her beam sabers.</p><p>“Knew it!” She shouted to the empty air. “I saw what you did to Kelpie, Maverick!”</p><p>She expected a shimmer of de-cloaking. Instead two more spinning propellers seemed to materialize from nowhere, already in flight. She carved into their rotational direction; the first blade shredded itself against her sabers but the second pulled a curveball. It nicked a beam blade and then carved between her left shoulder and her neck an instant before her shields fired and deflected it the rest of the way. It took incredible power for any solid-mass blow to trigger shields.</p><p>Meteor ordered her drones to fly up, dip face-down and screen the area with their beams. They scrawled char-marks on the ground and nearby walls to give an idea of where her target wasn’t.</p><p>“Enemy contact!” Meteor shouted, cueing her comm mentally. “Stealth tech, high-vee edged ceratanium projectile weaponry—”</p><p>Her drones pinged a proximity alert – she looked up –</p><p>Another spinblade popped into existence, bisected both koi, and popped back out, entering and exiting reality through what looked like a thin green line.</p><p>[Drone Lost]. [Drone Lost].</p><p>She strained to hear the phantom blade, but it vanished from reality. Instead she judged the velocity at which it filleted her fish, make a guess on timing – and carved it apart the instant it reappeared to carve her. The severed tips of the propeller flew off the hub and broke windows in the outpost.</p><p>Yet more whirring cued her to an attack from a higher angle. She twisted and spat a thermite spray. The leading blade sprayed it everywhere yet slowed down enough for her shields to take a lighter impact. She tried to ignore it as she cut down yet another of the goshdarn blades riding its draft.</p><p>The instant her shields quit flashing, a much larger blade severed her arm at the elbow.</p><p>Her shields flared much brighter, but the bite had bitten in the perfect delay between one cycle of protection and the next. The aim and force were deadly perfect.</p><p>Before her arm even hit the ground Meteor wheeled to her left and spouted molten metal. She saw a… figure. It evaded her attack by vanishing before her eyes, not into the shimmer of stealth but a mesh of green grid-lines lasting all of a millisecond. Her arm fell, and then there was silence – not even the shift of air at the edge of hearing that would suggest noise-cancelled footsteps.</p><p>Meteor flicked through her various vision modes. Heat, EM, radar, silhouette… nothing. <em>What is he?</em> She wondered at the speed of panic. <em>What’s he using? Holoform projection? Something new? … No, what he’s really using is you flopping in the open like an amateur.</em></p><p>She deftly and one-handedly stowed her saber and dashed to the outpost building. She stopped short of the door, letting a spinblade roll by right on cue.</p><p>
  <em>Knew it. He’s timing them now. Which means he’s having fun. Well I’ll show him fun…</em>
</p><p>The lobby was empty, wrecked with sandy footprints and dangling elements of ceiling. It offered room for her to move, but fewer options for her mysterious enemy. Good.</p><p>Meteor hopped onto the front desk in a corner of the room, grimacing at the remains of a poor Steel Beret behind it. She fired Smoke Spikes all over the floor; nozzles from each hissed downward and in no time at all she had a fog-machine barrier filling the space. She surveyed the room from her superior position.</p><p>“Come on, come on…”</p><p>The fog curled, quietly stripping color from the flooring and withering an artificial potted plant. Nothing but natural turbulence stirred it.</p><p>
  <em>What more bait do you need, Maverick?</em>
</p><p>Meteor switched her active VWES, slid her hand out of her buster, and slowly reached up to her earcap as her eyes scanned for movement.</p><p>“Fifth, please respond, I am cornered in engagement with a superior foe armed—”</p><p>
  <em>There!</em>
</p><p>A thin green line at a hole in the ceiling was all the cue she needed to unleash Exhalation Beam. She hit something – someone – long enough for a shield flash which disappeared entirely, but her beam kept going. She walked the lightning laser down the wall and swept it across the main entrance with quick jerks of her head, melting wherever it hit. She did a worse number on the lobby than Repliforce could ever hope to, scouring the frontal 90 degrees side by side.</p><p>The Maverick took the second bait, shifting in behind her with a subtle sound of displaced air. Meteor was quicker on the draw and felt the force resistance of her saber versus a high-grade shield energy.</p><p>He was gone before her eyes found him. On pure non-biological instinct she kept turning in place and blasted her last shot of Exhalation Beam up at an angle into what would have been her blind spot if she had hesitated her pivot at all. She blast-melted a hole into the second floor – and noticed a triangular segment of partially melted blade falling with the debris.</p><p>A much larger blade cut through her right elbow.</p><p>She sprayed thermite to her right side, and that time she saw him – some sort of dragonfly? – before he and a positively oversized solid sword vanished under a green wireframe mesh.</p><p>A few particles of her attack hit the fog and lit up the lobby.</p><p>Meteor huffed for breath, her shields strobing to ward off any follow-up attack, but she knew none would come. Her foe was patient down to the nanosecond. At least in the middle of a blazing room he would have to take damage to approach her, possibly revealing himself by a shield flash when—</p><p>The shape of her assailant appeared again, right in front of her. She spat a molten conflagration an instant before the blade struck, cutting her neck exactly deep enough to sever the WEAPON projector in her throat and no further.</p><p>He flashed – a clean hit! – and through the pain and strobing shields she saw him vanish. <em>Again</em>.</p><p>It was about time she got gone too, she decided.</p><p>Propeller blades conjured from nowhere spun down the walls into the corner. She dash-leapt off the desk as the flames started snuffing out, but a winged shape flanked her in midair and swung a blurred arc. The blade hit the flash of her shields and threw off huge blue diamond-shaped sparks, a telltale sign of extreme force taxing a shield battery to its limit.</p><p>She landed. She sped for the door.</p><p>Two more propeller blades sandwiched her at the knees. Her overworked shields couldn’t repel them. Her dash cut out with her legs cut off.</p><p>Meteor tumbled outdoors as gracelessly as a fish out of water. A final blade from above spun straight into her tail between two segments, pinning it and her to the ground where she had summarily discarded so many Repliforce soldiers a lifetime ago.</p><p>She realized over the sirens screaming in every line of her senses that her enemy was going for disabling strikes. One by one, limb by limb. She had heard about Mavericks doing live captures, and what evils they did with captured Hunters.</p><p>
  <em>No. This isn’t fair. What is he?! Too fast, too fast, this isn’t happening, this isn’t fair…!</em>
</p><p>The voice of her murderer didn’t speak so much as emanate from all around her. He enunciated with the slow and edged precision of a racist professor speaking a foreign language better than a native.</p><p>“Ess-Ess-Kay-Enn twenty-seven, dash, Kay-Ess zero-four. Revolutionary Library Notorious Hunter designation Vee Ay-sixty-one. Meteor Showa.” A deliberate pause. “Code name Volcano Roll,” he added lightly.</p><p>Despite her throat wound, Meteor still craned her head around and spoke, and she realized with chilling certainty that he wanted it that way.</p><p>“Mavericks call me a lot of things. Identify yourself.”</p><p>“Just a ghost,” he smiled audibly.</p><p>The wireframe cloak, if it even was a cloak, dropped away. Meteor’s foe was a gangly dragonfly-like reploid, ink black and bone white with a splash of dark green. Gently undulating sharp-edged wings ran from his backpack all the way down his tail. He delicately examined a boxcutter blade the size of a cartoon claymore. The tip was unmarred, but the next two segments were nearly melted through. He broke them off with a swift backhand and the sword itself ratcheted three replacement segments into place, generated from the hilt.</p><p>“You cost me three segments,” he observed, emoting only with his eyes, for his face below them was a mask of tight chevrons, more cicada than dragonfly. His swept-back antennae reminded Meteor of needles. “Well <em>done</em>, Meteor Showa.”</p><p>She stared at him, trying to will her Meteor Melter back into working order.</p><p>
  <em>If I can get this stupid propeller out of me I could tail-dash, but where to? And do what, flop at him?</em>
</p><p>She sent every distress beacon she could. <em>Come on, somebody, pick up…</em></p><p>“Oh, your communications are blocked,” the dragonfly said, making a show of buffing his blade with the heel of his palm. “I am sure that someone will find you once I depart. But first, Meteor Showa, to conclude our business: you have something that I want.”</p><p>Meteor could hear him <em>pronounce</em> that colon. His icy self-assurance actually helped her settle numbly into a sense of the existential inevitable.</p><p>“What.”</p><p>He lowered that stupid sword and raised his opposite arm. There was no buster that she could see. Despite that, his forearm pulsed with some sort of pink-purple radiation.</p><p>“Your soul.”</p><p>Meteor’s mind raced.</p><p>
  <em>Well, heck.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>This is it, then.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>At least it’s got a view of the ocean.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I will stay here, please…”</em>
</p><p>Meteor thought of a lot of things. A lot of people…</p><p>She braced for the fuchsia fireball to blow a hole through her. It gently insinuated into her frame instead.</p><p>As reality burst into kaleidoscopic knives from the inside out, she realized that her foe was being literal.</p><p>Sound died. Light died…</p><p>Meteor fell into a timeless interval.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Endless appreciation to M,<br/>who came up with Maverick Hunter Quest,<br/>and was nothing but supportive<br/>when I asked to write a spinoff.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Welcome Back</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meteor re-awakens after a week of unconsciousness and adjusts to the news of what she missed.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p>DYNAMIC NEURAL ARRAY SUMMARY</p><p>SSKN27-KS04 “METEOR SHOWA”</p><p>[CHASSIS]: &gt;STRUCTURE COMPROMISED&lt;</p><p>[FRAME]: &gt;STRUCTURE COMPROMISED&lt;</p><p>[WEAPONRY]: &gt;DATA CORRUPT DATA CORRUPTACORDATARRUPT&lt;</p><p>[OUTFITTED WITH]: &gt;DATACOROROPTATA&lt;</p><p>[VWES-4]: &gt;DDDAATT T TPURROCATAD&lt;</p><p>[HUNTER RANK]: UNASSESSED</p><p>…</p><p>[HUNTER RANK]: UNASSESSED</p><p>…</p><p>[HUNTER RANK]: &gt;Hiya. You look like hell, by the way.</p><p>…</p><p>[HUNTER RANK]: &gt;Don’t sweat it, we saved the good stuff. Or I did, anyway.</p><p>…</p><p>[HUNTER RANK]: &gt;This field won’t change back to A-plus no matter how long you focus your attention routine on it, fishflake. Plus it makes my work harder if I have to fiddle around dedicated cognitive retrieval algorithms.</p><p>…</p><p>[HUNTER RANK]: &gt;Look, I know you’re probably feeling like you’d delete off into oblivion if you didn’t focus on <em>something</em>, but just, I dunno, think of something else. Like J-pop. You still like J-pop, yeah?</p><p>…</p><p>[MAYBE IF I DID THIS]: &gt;you’d quit focusing just to spite me.</p><p>…</p><p>[I’M GOING TO]: &gt;start transcribing musical notations for dubstep if you keep staring at this.</p><p>…</p><p>[MAYBE THIS WILL --]</p><p>#</p><p>… A sense. That was all there was. It was an improvement.</p><p>Not floating. Floating would require a medium. Meteor wasn’t even sure she was a small.</p><p>She just… was, somewhere in the digital aether. She <em>was</em>, and the was she was was Meteor. And something evoking irritation and familiarity kept talking to her through lines of her own coded soul. She couldn’t think in images in that state, but she became fractionally more lucid. She grew aware of more attempts at communication and she even recognized them as such, but it was like receiving a cloud of shuffled sentences in glitter glue scrawled directly on her brain.</p><p>#</p><p>[OH GOD]: &gt;I wrote all that when I was drunk please disregard unless you experience this first in which case pre-disregard it I can’t delete shit right now without deleting, uh, you</p><p>[THAT BASTARD ^What Got You WAS]: &gt;A tall drink of piss called Meganeural Spectrod. He’s a Maverick build, designed around some new orthogonal C-axis shifter. I’m angstroms from finding a way to crash all Cyberspace just ‘cause of what he did to you, but basically everybody in the 16<sup>th</sup> would pin me to a corkboard if I actually went and did it.</p><p>[FRAME]: &gt;sweet</p><p>[SO HEY]: &gt;While I’ve got the attention of the last shred of you that’s still demonstrably you, let me just reiterate how glad I am that you’re a sturdy ablative mass in every sense. Absolutely saved your life, it did.</p><p>[THE BAD NEWS]: &gt;I don’t know if we can fix everything. I don’t know if I can, either.</p><p>[OUTFITTED WITH]: &gt;i’m sorry</p><p>[VWES-4]: &gt;borked</p><p>[YOU HAVE ^No CLOCK FUNCTION]: &gt;by the way. Which is why this probably feels weird, temporally. But wow, let me tell you <em>wow</em>, did he ever break your goodies. You’ll be back to dancing in the continuity of existence just as soon as I get ten godDAMN’ned minutes under your hood by my lonesome.</p><p>[HUNTER RANK]: &gt;what a mess you deserve better you always did</p><p>[CHASSIS]: &gt;thicker than a snickerssssssss</p><p>[THE GOOD NEWS]: &gt;You’re a totally unique case study! The first case of near-enough-to-fudge-it Soul Erasure in, well, the number of months is classified but it’s a lot! Very exciting, like! You had the head of the Geneva 16th himself up in your everything just the other day, hammering around like a 16th-century dentist. But that’s bad news. Other good news, pregnant pause colon: You probably won’t die!</p><p>[RE: CLOCK]: &gt;I literally have no idea when exactly in your stream of consciousness you’ll experience this message but if I’m right it should come last before—</p><p>#</p><p>Sound. Darkness. Which meant the capacity to tell what light was and where it wasn’t.</p><p>Temperature. Paralysis. Which meant a body she couldn’t move.</p><p>Things were looking up.</p><p>“You disregarded it, right?” A Welsh accent whispered in her ear, its tone as genderless as a chair. “It’s just that you might’ve forgotten how to ignore things and I needed to check. Also I might get fired if they find out I was texting comatose patients in their DNA again.”</p><p>She tried to speak. Her words appeared in silence on a screen out of her field of vision, if she could even see at that moment.</p><p>{Scatter Seelie I’ve come back to life just to tell you to please hush the heck up.}</p><p>“Missed you too,” it sounded like her friend grinned. “Now, lights on and voice refigged in three, two, one—”</p><p>The first thing Meteor saw was an unfamiliar ceiling, sterile and white where it wasn’t sterile and gray.</p><p>The second thing she saw was a fanning pair of moth antennae leaning directly into her field of vision. They bent back to lay on and nearly blend into a shaggy white pixie-bob hairstyle above big expressive purple eyes and pointed helmet-fin ears. The face between them was a cherubic picture of soft-edged glitter-freckled androgyny.</p><p>“Check check,” Scatter Seelie squished two fingers into their cheeks, “how many geniuses am I holding up?”</p><p>“Ze-ee-ro-point fivve, Skittle,” Meteor’s voice crackled from her unmoving mouth. It was hard for her, personally, to think of them by any other name.</p><p>“Bugger, hang on, lemme polish your speech center.” Skittle hopped their four-foot-nothing self off their stepstool and flew over to a console, their pale green luna moth wings flapping behind in a blur. Their armor layer shimmered like oily opals, but white and green and purple were consistent underneath the sheen.</p><p>Meteor’s eyes tracked the moth’s flight and noticed another reploid in the sterile-walled private room: a blue-gray cyclops, smaller than Meteor herself, wearing a white lab coat that draped over its bulbous humanoid form with sleeves better suited to a judicial robe. Its head was nearly spherical and its rather conventional jaw sported the longest and thinnest mustache she’d ever seen.</p><p>“Ocular motor skills seem fine,” said the probably-doctor. “Even that was in doubt for a while. Valence Proteus,” he cordially nodded by way of greeting. “I’m given to understand you already know your dutiful medical technician.”</p><p>Meteor blinked. So <em>that</em> was Proteus, the head of HQ2’s 16<sup>th</sup> – the Research and Development Unit. A whole year in Veracruz with an officer’s rank hadn’t been enough for her to so much as lay eyes on him.</p><p>“Yeah. I mean, yes sir. Nice to finally mmkkh—” her voice cracked into silence.</p><p>“Try again,” said Skittle, “should work now.”</p><p>“You stink.”</p><p>“Perfect!” They clapped. Fine sparkles puffed out on impact.</p><p>Valence Proteus looked at Skittle without moving his head. On closer inspection, Meteor saw, his single big eye had a hexagonal arrangement of independently focusing pupils, probably seeing in modes she couldn’t imagine. “Adequate, Seelie. I think you can give more of her systems back to her now. Now, Showa, you must surely have questions. That will constitute your debrief, as we already know far more than you regarding the transpired events.”</p><p><em>Debrief</em>. Which meant she was still an active Hunter. Buoyed by the increasingly positive developments, she tried to pick out which of Proteus’s pupils to watch.</p><p>“My chronometer’s not giving me continuity past the last minute. How long was – ah.” Her mouth finally moved around her words. “Thanks Skittle. How long was I out, sir?”</p><p>Proteus’s northwest pupil dilated. “Between the re-acquisition of your body and this moment: seven days, one hour, fifty-seven minutes.”</p><p>Meteor regained motor control in her torso just in time to jerk upright. “A whole <em>week?</em>”</p><p>Proteus waved his hand at her and a gentle yet insistent electromagnetic push pressed her back on the flat slab of medical table. Cables connected to various joints on her – she now saw – fully intact body reached under the table. Inclined edges on the slab itself supported her bulky rounded frame and kept her from rolling to either side.</p><p>“Please refrain from excess movement,” said Proteus.</p><p>Thoughts of scrap-scattered sand flashed through Meteor’s mind. “But what about my mission?”</p><p>“Twelfth Tropical was able to reclaim their Bahamas outpost after you burned your swath through the occupiers. They’ve begun the process of rebuilding, thanks to you.”</p><p>Well. That was something.</p><p>“What happened to my assailant – the sword bug with the weird stealth system?”</p><p>Proteus’s flagellum-like mustache undulated all the way down. “The whereabouts of the S-Class Maverick Meganeural Spectrod are unknown. It seems he took what he wanted and left. Now, I’m given to understand that you can keep classified intelligence to yourself?”</p><p>“Yes sir.” Oh the things she’d seen.</p><p>“Good. I’m clearing you. Spectrod has no stealth system. Instead he possesses the currently unique ability to locally enter and exit Cyberspace at will, jumping between the overlayer axis and conventional reality without a domain pylon’s somatic-layer transfer protocol.”</p><p>Meteor blinked. Cyberspace tech mostly went over her head. “That’s bad, right?”</p><p>“Terrifying,” he dryly replied. “Even Repliforce’s recent incursion agent did his damage entirely <em>within</em> Cyberspace, and only after accessing the domain pylon in Hyderabad, not phasing in and out wherever he pleased. We are currently testing interdiction traps to corner Spectrod when next he shows himself.”</p><p>“Jesus Mary and her little <em>lambs</em>,” the fairy moth threw their little hands up, exasperated, “isolation protocols are supposed to be the sort of thing you nail down <em>before</em> you set up a global warp-data network, but nobody ever asks the likes of me.”</p><p>“Maybe they’re intimidated by your charisma,” Meteor joked.</p><p>“Ha! Givin’ ‘em too much credit.”</p><p>Skittle flipped a holo-switch on their console. Meteor felt her arms again. She flexed her fingers and took in more of the room. It was bright and clinical with flat consoles under floating screens. One whole wall was a busy arrangement of molecularly-clean repair tools.</p><p>“So how bad was it? What kind of shape was I in?”</p><p>Proteus walked past her and extended a hand to a console. His five fingers split into fifteen spindlier digits and manipulated a touchscreen in a complicated pattern. “Abysmal. Multiple solid-mass blade injuries. Catastrophic armor failure. Arms and legs severed and missing. Tail disabled enough to require a remount. But most intriguingly?”</p><p>A floating screen pivoted into her line of sight. The energy conduits between her LIFE cell and the rest of her body were yellow, but everything else was fuchsia. She remembered Spectrod hit her with a fireball of that color…</p><p>“Your Dynamic Neural Array was, for a brief time, all but empty,” said Proteus. “Your body was alive, and so were you, but in only the narrowest legal sense. It called to mind a covered-up phenomenon known as Soul Erasure. However, your condition had key differences. Whereas victims of Soul Erasure had their in-use DNA remotely transferred via energies I can only describe as exotic, your DNA seems to have been forcefully returned to a default setting on everything short of your memories. The missing data shows no signs of deletion, but rather… transferrance. I have named this effect Soul Format.”</p><p>Meteor stared at the ceiling, absorbing all that. “Default setting?”</p><p>“Happy birthday,” Skittle twirled a little finger in the air. “You’re a new you.”</p><p>She took a closer look at her hands. The fingers were a little more sensitive, the forearm plating a little thinner. She looked down; her feet were still unresponsive, but they too were leaner. Her will had stipulated that every effort be made to keep her in active service, but given the parts and labor that must have been needed…</p><p>“What’d it cost me?” She cringed.</p><p>“Tell me do, amoeboss,” Skittle chimed from their console, “is an arm-and-a-leg joke insensitive?”</p><p>“<em>Yes</em>, Seelie.”</p><p>“Right then. You’re Nebraska-flat broke, fishflake. I actually had to chip in some of my own funds to see everything through to a kinda-sorta-worthy-of-you state. We’re even, by the way.”</p><p>Skittle pressed a button. With a rolling shock through her body, Meteor could feel her legs and tail again. She could tell by the diminished power flow that her secondary dash was history – but she was alive, and in one piece.</p><p>“Great. But what I really mean to ask is…”</p><p>“You are fit for duty,” says Proteus. “You’ll be cleared to resume combat operations in thirty-seven minutes. Keeping to schedule, you should be released from our care in seven minutes.”</p><p>“Thanks.”</p><p>“At Rank B.”</p><p>She might have leapt clear off the slab if Proteus wasn’t ready for her. For an instant she thought she was paralyzed again, but her sensors told her that she was being held perfectly still. Proteus stared into her, various pupils dilating and contracting, maintaining an electromagnetic grip that she suspected could increase pressure indefinitely.</p><p>“Please be calm,” the amoeba advised. “Your rank valuation is neither arbitrary nor punitive. Your prior armament and physical specifications were a clear A-Rank, and coupled with your experience you may well have been evaluated as a low S-Rank had you seen more duties against enemy officers, but you must understand that was <em>prior</em>. Aside from your diminished armor and mobility, your high-phase sabers, your three-stage charge buster, and your manufacturer’s drone system were all lost with your stolen arms. Furthermore, the effects of Soul Format eliminated your stored Variable Weapon Emulator System data.”</p><p>“All of it?” Meteor whined, despite herself. “Even the beam?”</p><p>“Yes. Only your core WEAPON system remains unchanged. Seelie can cover the minutiae of your available loadout once you are cleared to resume combat operations in thirty-six minutes.” He paused. “Thirty-five. So please, refrain from outbursts.”</p><p>“I will, sir,” she muttered, and felt his grip melt away. Skittle busied themself at another console right at the head of the table.</p><p>“Good,” said Proteus. “Any further questions?”</p><p>Meteor settled back and crossed her white fingers over her chest. It was a rounded surface of functional black and red-orange armor with heat-dissipation vents on either side of a sternum plate. She was no mermaid.</p><p>“Just one. What’s our status with Repliforce?”</p><p>Proteus’s eastern pupils contracted. Skittle smirked.</p><p>“You want it upside the head or set out with tea cakes?”</p><p>“Hit me, Skittle.”</p><p>“Repliforce is finished. General’s dead. Colonel’s dead. Final Weapon’s a geostationary shipwreck.”</p><p>“You’re <em>kidding</em>,” Meteor gasped, looking back at Skittle upside-down.</p><p>“Not today. You slept through the end of the war, friendo. All that’s left is an apple crate of scrambling officers and affiliated grunts. It’s over.”</p><p>“But <em>how?</em>” She started to turn over, but Proteus gave her a Look. She stayed in place, vibrating with interest both personal and scholarly. “On what fronts? How many engaged? How’d we—”</p><p>“Look,” Skittle patted the air in her direction, “I’m sure a history dork like you is just dying for more deets, but you can look that stuff up yourself, ‘cause, really? After the daily agita from bad news? I just <em>do</em> not give enough fractions of a damn. The Most Powerful Army in History is finally about as relevant to my daily life as Zero’s shiny green tits, and I couldn’t be happier.”</p><p>She could hardly believe it. Skittle was a lot of things, but never a liar.</p><p>
  <em>It’s over. It’s really over.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The biggest news since Doppler, and I freaking missed it.</em>
</p><p>Oh well, what did it matter that she got it second-hand? Legions of reploids weren’t killing each other anymore. Nine billion humans on Earth and in orbit weren’t caught between the gears anymore. The world wasn’t at risk of ending anymore.</p><p>
  <em>Maybe this time will finally be the last.</em>
</p><p>Meteor sighed with a smile… which melted under her annoying habit of realism.</p><p>“Who’d we lose?”</p><p>“Many,” said Proteus. “Specific inquiries about your comrades in the Fourth can be fielded by your Unit Analysis officer, and your unit commander can decide whether to clear you about information not publicly available. Ask them.”</p><p>“I plan to, sir. Oh, um, one more thing…”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“You said this Soul Format transferred most of my DNA…”</p><p>“Worried about an <em>eeeevil</em> clone?” Skittle bent their fingers into witchy claws.</p><p>“Well yes?”</p><p>“The transfer quality remains to be seen,” said Proteus. “First, it was incomplete – you are, after all, still here. Second, the ghastly practice of DNA resurrection is costly and imperfect even with optimal resources and facilities, which Repliforce and the remaining organized Maverick cells now frankly <em>lack</em>. Finally, what little intelligence we have on Spectrod suggests a mercenary disposition. We hypothesize that without a client organization, he will either fence his stolen good, use it himself, or—” Proteus’s tone took on disgust— “add it to the Maverick forces’ archives. Rest assured we have eyes on all marketplaces, and will track any instance of WEAPON data or other parts resembling yours changing hands.”</p><p>Meteor relaxed a bit. “Okay. Thanks.” She paused. “One more one-more-thing?”</p><p>“Yes?” Proteus audibly rolled his eye.</p><p>“I really liked that beam. And my other stuff. Can I buy the <em>vee-wess</em> data back from our archives?”</p><p>“Yeeeeah,” Skittle cringed, “you know the Repliforce Cyberspace-wrecker he mentioned?”</p><p>“You’re going to tell me no, aren’t you.”</p><p>“I’m not gonna tell you <em>not</em> no…”</p><p>Proteus sighed, “In the postmortem it was discovered that the agent known as Cyber Peacock replaced ninety percent of our Variable Weapon Emulator Library – including all of your personal contributions – with malicious code which constituted an infinite recursion of some past-century musical video about fortitude and faithfulness.”</p><p>“Oh. Um. Which one?”</p><p>“Rick Astley,” Skittle answered. “You know the one.”</p><p>“Oh.”</p><p>The remaining time passed without incident or comment.</p><p>“And that’s it,” said Skittle, swiping one last item off their screen. The wiring keeping Meteor in place disconnected and retracted. “You can go acclimate, get caught up, whatever you like. See you in half an hour.”</p><p>Meteor sat up. “You will?”</p><p>The fairy moth flitted up to eye level with her and hovered there. “You’d best believe it, Meteor. Soul Format might have long-term problems even old Blinky can’t see, so you’re looking at your new handler.”</p><p>“Not entirely accurate,” Proteus interjected, entering something on a console. The outline of a door appeared on a wall. “For a period of not less than four weeks commensurate with your roster schedule, Seelie will be your attending technician and oversee any and all upgrades acquired. They will be at your disposal and submit <em>frequent</em> reports to me <em>in addition</em> to their other duties,” he stressed.</p><p>“Whoopdee-doodle,” Skittle deadpanned. “Week three, nicked wrists again, this time with plasma torch. Felt spicier than the knives.”</p><p>“Hush,” Meteor flicked their antennae, “don’t joke like that.”</p><p>“Sorry,” they fixed their hair into a proper mess. “Habits.”</p><p>“Take care, Meteor Showa,” Proteus nodded to her, gesturing meaningfully at the outline. “For the sake of your happiness, I hope we need not meet again.”</p><p>It was an odd way of wishing good luck, but she took it.</p><p>The rectangle slid aside at her approach, and she exited into a hall so monochrome it hurt. The luminous white ceiling shined down muted gray walls into a vantablack floor. She turned to ask where to go, but the door was already gone, the wall smooth as slate. It finally dawned on her that the place must have been within Cyberspace, the spatial layer of sufficiently advanced technology superimposed onto the mundane dimensions of the world. Like nearly everyone on Earth, she had heard of Cyberspace and its miraculous potential but never before had reason to actually go inside. She expected more color and movement and aesthetically whimsical geometry and platforms, like in all the videos about it.</p><p>It then dawned on her that if this facility held one of the heads of Maverick Hunter R&amp;D, the first victim of a newly discovered Maverick weapon, <em>and</em> an engineer of Scatter Seelie’s caliber, it was probably a private pocket of a private instance, as secure as the inside of a black hole.</p><p>A quick look told her there was only one destination, an open door at one end of the hall. She hurried to it to escape the brutalist geometry, getting used to the new relative lightness of her frame with every step. A teleporter lay in the closet beyond the doorway. A sheet of yellow legal-pad paper taped to the wall outside read, in shiny purple italics, <em>One Way</em>.</p><p>Meteor stepped on, and before she could even look for a button to press, she vanished.</p><p>#</p><p>Meteor found herself outdoors under a night sky, alone, standing on the underused beam-in pad on the observation deck of a tower fifty stories high. She knew the spot immediately.</p><p>To her right, past the human-proof safety railings, lay the busiest shipyard in Mexico. Beyond it, the city of Veracruz stretched a dense and unbroken metropolitan area over the horizon to Xalapa, the state capitol. To her left stood Veracruz’s chief client: Maverick Hunter Headquarters Central America – “HQ2” for short, for the host city’s name was only appended when speaking of specific units – a military campus larger in total area than HQ1 Europe only by virtue of its waterfront. The line of private docks and arched buildings was the primary seat of the 6<sup>th</sup> Marine Armada, HQ2’s largest tenant, from which Meteor herself was transferred to the more multi-terrain 4<sup>th</sup> Overland after only a couple of months. Seeing it all sparkle at night hit her like a tidal wave.</p><p>The Gulf of Mexico rolled under the Milky Way, washed out of default optical resolution by the light pollution of Veracruz. Meteor felt the much-abused world turning, shaking off the dust of the latest war with every roll of the waves. She knew too much about history to really believe that things could ever get so bad again, but at least civilization was better off than it was a week ago.</p><p>Progress. Hope. New leases on life.</p><p>She was back.</p><p>And she had half an hour to fill before going straight back to work.</p><p>All at once, multiple message signals pinged her, now that she was finally away from R&amp;D’s dead zone. It seemed she’d gotten a lot of messages this past week. She reached for a compartment in her arm… <em>Oh, right, new arm. Heck. I liked that datapad.</em></p><p>She headed to the elevator, bringing up her social media manager in a field of her perception that had nothing to do with her eyes. She never liked it as much as having a tactile interface. Her primary Hunter-related news aggregator loaded a deluge of headlines and partial ledes. Her mind skimmed a few.</p><p>#</p><p>&gt;REPLIFORCE TAKES FINAL WEAPON&lt;</p><p>Hunter Command has acknowledged General’s seizure of Final Weapon. Preliminary surveys of the wreckage of HQ10 L.E.O. indicate that the 11<sup>th</sup> Space Command has lost nearly …</p><p>&gt;EULER: CONGO CANNON “TACTICALLY INOPERABLE”&lt;</p><p>After thorough evaluation, the Enigma-class weapon “Congo” is unavailable as an option for wartime usage, says HQ5 Africa commander Krieg Euler. A guerilla unit of Repliforce Special Operations under Web Spider had occupied the …</p><p>&gt;CRASH CORMORANT SLAIN&lt;</p><p>Crash Cormorant, notorious and famed member of Los Mortales, has been declared KIA after a failed assassination attempt against Colonel at a Repliforce Polar base at Yellowknife. Allegations of faulty intelligence have …</p><p>&gt;BRUSSELS BLITZED, STORM OWL RETIRED&lt;</p><p>The remnant of Major Tertius’s forces, having regrouped under Chief of Staff Storm Owl, launched an air offensive against the European Union capital city. Rapid response from …</p><p>&gt;ABEL CITY UNREST CONTINUES&lt;</p><p>Abel City remains under curfew after last week’s violent pro-Repliforce demonstration, which stemmed from leaks of a failed, secret parley between Zero and Colonel at Memorial Hall in July. Irish Prime Minister Tobin reaffirmed …</p><p>&gt;OPERATION RAMA SUCCESSFUL, MAJOR SECUNDUS RETIRED&lt;</p><p>After days of fighting, the international force spearheaded by the Maverick Hunters has driven the Repliforce Navy from its former headquarters in Sri Lanka and destroyed an estimated 70% of its combat capacity. Among the …</p><p>&gt;GENEVA 4<sup>TH</sup> DEFEATS REPLIFORCE POLAR, MAJOR QUINTUS RETIRED&lt;</p><p>Repliforce Polar Operations Major Quintus and his entire division have fallen to the Geneva 4<sup>th</sup> Overland Unit in a climactic battle in the Sakhalins. Key to the operation was …</p><p>&gt;SPACE COAST BLITZED, COLONEL RETIRED&lt;</p><p>Legendary Maverick Hunter Zero has retired the field commander of Repliforce. At 16:00 local time, Colonel launched a blitzkrieg offensive from Havana, attacking Cape Canaveral with …</p><p>&gt;MAJOR PRIMUS EVADES COMBINED 9<sup>TH</sup>&lt;</p><p>The Columbus and Manaus 9<sup>th</sup> Ranger Units have lost contact with Repliforce Army Major Primus. After his forces attempted to regroup by rail in Kansas City, the …</p><p>&gt;FINAL WEAPON NEUTRALIZED, GENERAL RETIRED&lt;</p><p>VICTORY – VICTORY – VICTORY – X and Zero have together …</p><p>#</p><p><em>Gosh</em>.</p><p>Meteor hit the ground floor and took a walk outside.</p><p>HQ2’s T-shaped main thoroughfare passed from the city proper down to the boulevard bordering the 6<sup>th</sup> Marine Unit’s substantial shoreline share of the campus. If there was ever a celebration there, it was long over and cleaned up. Meteor could just imagine the parade.</p><p>She filtered her messages for “Personal Contacts” and cautiously selected “Read All.”</p><p>#</p><p>&gt;SENDER: Deco</p><p>METEOR WHAT HAPPENED</p><p>&gt;SENDER: Deco</p><p>Oh no Mimi I saw your op site. I took my team out there personally and recovered what parts looked like yours. They tell me you’re okay but being held for observation. Please get well soon.</p><p>&gt;SENDER: Deco</p><p>What sort of news are you getting in there? They’re saying Sri Lanka was history’s largest amphibious landing! I know how excited you’d be to hear that. I attached some links about force size and contributing nations – well, what’s not classified, anyway.</p><p>&gt;SENDER: Deco</p><p>WE WON! Get yourself out of that bed so we can celebrate!</p><p>&gt;SENDER: Deco</p><p>Goodness alive, I haven’t felt so light in months. I can feel the future spreading before us all, but until you’re back it won’t be as full. Please be well.</p><p>&gt;SENDER: Deco</p><p>The absence of so many is terrible, Mi. I can be clinical in the field, but then I come back and the silence around the lounge and in the office just weighs heavy. Brother’s helping me through it, but I really wish you were here too.</p><p>&gt;SENDER: Nouveau</p><p>Meteor get yourself fixed right the hell now. Deco’s been… hugging. -N</p><p>&gt;SENDER: S.Asagi (Auto-Translate: JP-T)</p><p>Hey you! (ᗒᗨᗕ) They just told us what happened. I’ve passed word home and around the school. We’re all pretty much of the opinion that you’re a big damn hero and hope you get back on your feet just as soon as you want to. (๑˃̵ᴗ˂̵)و Take the enforced time on your back and catch up on sleep! Maybe then you’ll see how fun taking a break can be! o(^▽^)o Write back when you can, we’re all pulling for you. Love you, sis. (✿◠‿◠)</p><p>-from Chagoi, Kohaku, Sanke, Tancho, &amp; Kujaku, by way of Asagi (your favorite!!! (^_−)☆)</p><p>&gt;SENDER: M.Turtle</p><p>Speak to me in the command room when you’re out, please. You need to be caught up before I call a meeting. -Turtle</p><p>&gt;SENDER: Atajo (Auto-Translate: ESP-L)</p><p>Hey, heard my favorite fish is getting out of the cooler! Sorry was too slogged to nav on your Bahamas op. Sent your quarters a bottle of that sugary nonsense you like. Ever want a real drink, you know where to find me. -A</p><p>&gt;SENDER: V.Batteram</p><p>Welcome back.</p><p>#</p><p>Meteor paused at the perpendicular intersection, mulling her options. Much as she would have liked a few minutes to settle into private decompression or absorb Deco’s perpetual unironic happiness, work was work, and she had a responsibility to get caught up with it. Nobody was going to slow down for her – and she wouldn’t have wanted them to.</p><p>Overland was the unit of generalists, tactically effective in any environment under any conditions, and as such had the biggest share of personnel and biggest real estate footprint in the Hunters. It was only by virtue of HQ2 being the nexus of Maverick Hunter waterborne operations in the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the Hunters’ biggest physical transport hub, that the Veracruz 4<sup>th</sup>’s on-base space came in third among the other Units. Regardless, the 4<sup>th</sup>’s portion would have constituted a major outpost if it were alone.</p><p>A fat grove of stocky interconnected towers clustered around the Courtyard, a square lake of pavement crisscrossed with curbs and right-of-way paint. An observation deck hung above, the keystone of two arched crossing skybridges anchored on the Courtyard’s corner towers. Meteor passed under it as a ride armor transport trundled by. The carrier disappeared down a ramp as glass doors parted for her.</p><p>She made her way in, nodding to the few enlisted she saw in the halls. They were all reploids, all of the Cabochon series, modern and reliable mass-production humanoid soldiers laboring to their function until their at-manufacture contract – their term of indenture – was up. A couple of them, green-armored Chrysoprase models, leaned to each other and whispered as Meteor passed. She was used to minor celebrity status.</p><p>She quickly found the command center, a long oval room with LED panels breaking up the sameness of the dark gray walls and floor. Consoles around the walls stood unmanned. The central holo-display beaming from a dais in the circular six-seater table held blurry two-dimensional photos of dragonfly-like creatures with too many wings.</p><p>Observing them was a brown and white sea turtle reploid, about Meteor’s height but half again her width, and on every panel of her shell was a tightly shut iris aperture. The turtle’s head looked up in profile, her beak turning up at the corner for a smile as she spoke with an upper-class British dialect.</p><p>“Showa. So good to see you standing.”</p><p>It wasn’t the slightest bit odd to hear the Queen’s English from a unit commander in Mexico. <em>Speaking</em> in any language was utterly trivial for reploids. True <em>fluency</em>, however, required being able to <em>think</em> in that language, which affected far more capacity in the electronic brain than just speech processing, and so most reploids hit their limit around the sixth or seventh language and relied on auto-translate for others. For institutional unity, the Maverick Hunters required one of each member’s cognitive-linguistic fluencies to be English, which nevertheless allowed for a constellation of accents and dialects chosen wholly by the speaker as a reflection of their home culture.</p><p>Meteor liked such subtleties of voices, just as a personal interest. Her preferred flavor of the <em>lingua franca</em> was light Japanese-American.</p><p>“Good to <em>be</em> standing, Turtle. Those bugs look familiar.”</p><p>Minefield Turtle hit a button and the bad cryptid pictures blinked out to a slowly rotating Maverick Hunter insignia. She turned to face Meteor with a lightness of movement that belied her size, much like Meteor herself. The collar of her shell was high and swept like she was on a bomb squad, and for good reason.</p><p>“I’ll just bet,” said Turtle. “This ‘Spectrod’ made you miss quite a lot.”</p><p>“So I hear. I’ve only caught up a little.”</p><p>“Then do you have any remaining questions before we begin?”</p><p>The six chairs around the table were low and backless with armrests that curved out of the seat. Each ran on a rail to an unmanned console station. Meteor took a seat. “Um, shouldn’t this be coming from the Commander? Is he deployed?”</p><p>Turtle’s bulk suddenly shouldered extra weight. She shook her head a little. “Oh dear. I shall have words with Proteus for not telling you. I’ve been promoted, on account of vacancy.”</p><p>Oh.</p><p>Rumors in the ranks held that Captain Minefield Turtle and Unit Commander Earthquake Jaguar had been… fraternizing under the radar. Meteor knew the Veracruz 4<sup>th</sup>’s patient pillar of matronly strength wasn’t one to show grief openly, but still…</p><p>“How did he go out?” Meteor asked, gently.</p><p>Turtle radiated distant pride.</p><p>“Valiantly. When Repliforce hit Florida, all of the Sixth was still deployed to Sri Lanka, so we were the first to respond. I took the sea, he the land. He discovered Colonel was in attendance, and… slowed him enough for Zero to catch up. Colonel was retired that day, thanks to him.”</p><p>“I see. I’m sorry.”</p><p>“I’m not. It’s exactly how Jaguar would have wanted it.” Turtle examined the floor, hands behind her shell, before looking back at Meteor. “Unfortunately, the line of succession isn’t how I’d like it.”</p><p>“Ma’am?”</p><p>“You’ve been demoted… Lieutenant.”</p><p>Meteor involuntarily clenched her narrow armrests, carefully keeping her attitude clinical.</p><p>“I was unaware that combat rating and institutional function were paired, Ma’am.”</p><p>“They aren’t.” Turtle finally sat across the table from her and took on a sterner bearing. The atmosphere instantly changed from cordial to courtroom. “Your demotion is based on three particular choices you made in your history with your work as a Decommissions officer. From which you are also relieved of duty.”</p><p>Meteor’s professionalism cracked. “But I loved Decomms!”</p><p>“I know. You had a very efficient and people-friendly approach, with which I can find no fault in and of itself.”</p><p>“But?”</p><p>“But the preliminary postwar assessment report released by the Oversight Council just yesterday noted that Headquarters Two was understrength for the entire duration of the war. Consider ride armors, for example.”</p><p>Turtle pressed a button on the table and wirelessly synced her personal data archive – not her mind, but mind-adjacent – to the holo. She cued up ride armor schematics: a Chimera, the workhorse of the old Developed Ride Armor series, and all the modular limbs and accessories that diversified it for specialized combat.</p><p>“Now that’s just unfair,” Meteor objected. “I ordered our <em>dee-ar-ay</em> series recycled and replaced because they were slow, way behind the curve of shield tech, and always needed maintenance.”</p><p>“True, but then you convinced our Third and Eighth to follow your lead. Between us and them we finished dismantling three-quarters of the entire base’s ride armor fleet just six hours before Sky Lagoon. Filling the gap was <em>rather difficult</em>. We entered the war on our back foot – or as the report put it, ‘an unacceptable state of material unreadiness which redounded in varying degrees to all wartime field operations.’”</p><p>Meteor tightened her grip. For the Oversight Council, those were strong words.</p><p>“As you’re well aware, Ma’am, I’m not responsible for Repliforce’s timing.”</p><p>“True again, yet Decommission Officers Brazier and Alameda-Estrada claimed that their decisions, swiftly agreed to by Commanders Honeypot and Pangolin, were based in large part on an extensive and persuasive presentation <em>you</em> put together. I understand cartoons were involved.”</p><p>“My sister likes to draw,” Meteor muttered. She resumed louder, “I’m also not responsible for the ultimate decisions of other Decomms officers, and certainly not their unit commanders.”</p><p>“Be that as it may, I’m not done.” Turtle swapped a display for a schematic of two common third-generation humanoid reploid soldiers, a male- and female-type, similar in height and proportions to the fourth-generation Cabochon regulars. “Consider the Steel Beret issue.”</p><p><em>Heck</em>, Meteor swore in her head<em>. Okay, this one’s on me.</em></p><p>“Their specs were significantly below fourth-generation mass-production models, and all of our third-gens <em>including</em> Steel Berets had admirably served up to or past their contracture. I feel that honorably discharging them was appropriate based on available knowledge at the time.”</p><p>“And yet all decisions have consequences, intended or otherwise.” Turtle’s presentation brought up another reploid schematic alongside the first two – a taller body with a rounded chest, genderless in basic design. None of them included actual berets. “Overland had more Steel Berets than any other unit. Discharging every one from our service necessarily led our Requisitions department to replace them with fourth-gens, which at the time meant <em>only</em> Standard Berets. When the Cabochon series rolled out, the more experienced Standards concentrated at the upper ranks. <em>Eighty percent</em> of all Standard Berets in the Hunters defected, Lieutenant – and why wouldn’t they, as their series was designed for Repliforce in the first place? It was a double blow. Our loss equaled their gain.”</p><p>“Ma’am, I had no way of knowing—”</p><p>“And that isn’t all. You recall Sounding Humpback?”</p><p>Oh no.</p><p>“Don’t tell me she…”</p><p>The reploid soldiers swapped out for a single reploid body: a humpback whale with arms. Meteor knew the figure well.</p><p>“As I recall, your last act in the Sixth was to refuse to sign off on discharging her. ‘She convinced me that she has more to give in service to humanity,’ I believe was your quote. This, despite her open political sympathies for pirates, human and otherwise. If you had heeded recommendations, perhaps she wouldn’t have still had her combat specs when she went Maverick last week – <em>with the help of pirates</em>. Plasmanta is of the opinion that your choice reflected a very specific yet very acute lack of foresight, and I agree.”</p><p>Meteor felt the reploid equivalent of dizzy. <em>All right, if I’m being honest, all of that does kind of stack up to a demotion.</em></p><p>“Where’s Humpback now?” She asked, meekly.</p><p>“Sixth wanted first crack at her. I believe she’s on Cangrejo’s roster. May he hunt well.” Turtle looked aside for a moment, a sign of a private comm. “Ah. Speaking of rosters, Nouveau’s done. Any remaining business, Lieutenant?”</p><p>Meteor wanted nothing more than to move on. “No, Ma’am.”</p><p>“Very well.” Turtle’s fingers did a brief dance across a contact pad on the table; the march of technology could never completely do away with tactile interfaces. She spoke up: “Good morning, field officers, your new rosters are complete. Assemble in the command room for an active duty meeting at zero-five hundred.”</p><p>Meteor crossed her arms and grumped to herself. No koi drones, no VWES, lost upgrades, lost armor, busted down a rank and a Rank. The day – <em>technically</em> day, as it was four forty-four in the morning – could only go up.</p><p>Turtle stepped over to her, firm and calm as a governess. “I argued against your demotion, for the record, but I’m actually glad you’ve shed your extra duties. I need you back to your best as soon as possible, Meteor. Sitting at a desk and quibbling over the line between inefficiency and liability in every little piece of equipment just doesn’t serve that.”</p><p>“But I like quibbling,” Meteor pouted.</p><p>Turtle rested a broad hand on her shoulder. “Don’t think of it as a step back. Think of it as having one less distraction. I truly am sorry, though. Regardless of what the uppermost ranks believe, you’re still worthy of being second-in-command someday.”</p><p>“I know,” Meteor lied. “Thanks.”</p><p>“Chin up, Meteor. I’m confident you’ll fight your way back to fitness in short order.”</p><p>In shorter order, the other field officers of the Veracruz 4<sup>th</sup> Overland Unit began trickling into the room.</p><p>The first was Nouveau, a regal figure who gave Meteor his usual haughty look from under a silver circlet fitted with purple gem-like sensors. His pointed silver earcaps stuck out of his long and unbound waterfall of blonde hair like elf ears. That was, indeed, the point – he was designed to traditional fantasy aesthetics, from the silver nanofiber drapery at his hips to the Art Nouveau detailing of his black, lavender, and gold-cuffed armor.</p><p>“Lieutenant,” he greeted.</p><p>“Lieutenant,” Meteor muttered.</p><p>“Actually it’s Second-In-Command and <em>Captain</em>, now,” said Nouveau in his New Zealand dialect.</p><p>“I’m fine, by the way.”</p><p>Nouveau took a seat by Turtle. “I can see that. Never doubted.”</p><p>The second, Deco, came shortly after. She smiled wide and sat between Meteor and Nouveau. Her black and beige armor was a graceful stack of artfully streamlined geometry with pink and light blue shield-projector and sensor crystals arranged as permanent fashionable jewelry. She lacked any of her brother’s elven aesthetic, looking instead like a 20<sup>th</sup>-century flapper with a dress like an Art Deco lampshade. Her black helmet over her brown bob hairstyle took after a cloche hat.</p><p>“Mimi!” Deco beamed. “It’s good to see you again.”</p><p>“Thanks. I got your messages – and your brother’s. Hugging, were you?”</p><p>“Oh, you know me,” Deco flicked her wrist.</p><p>“She was a <em>tick</em>,” Nouveau griped.</p><p>“He wouldn’t know happy if it tweaked his ears,” Deco stage-whispered to Meteor behind her hand. Her dialect was lighter than her brother’s.</p><p>The door slid open once more and a final figure stepped through. A reploid’s strength often had little to do with their body type, but his seven-foot frame was fully accurate to his immense brawn. Big white hooves and tree-trunk legs supported a hulking frame of bold blues over white with armored strips of bright yellow exclaiming the damage their impact could do. Thick polygonal yellow horns curled from the heavy armor plating of his square-jawed head. The only soft thing about Volt Batteram was his footsteps; he walked like a dancer, wasting no energy in his perfect balance.</p><p>Batteram spoke all he needed to with the short, polite nod he spared Meteor. As he entered, he seemed to be shedding glitter from behind.</p><p>Meteor squinted. “Skittle?”</p><p>Skittle flitted out from behind the big ram. Their wings beat like a sugared-up hummingbird’s and cast a light show of holo-sparkles just for the effect. They were also loaded with tool belts and pouches and a set of oversized goggles pressing their antennae into their hair.</p><p>“Yo.”</p><p>“Welcome, everyone,” said Turtle. “Let’s begin. Firstly, as you can see, Showa is back with us, though in a marginally diminished capacity.”</p><p>“Not diminished for long,” Meteor promised.</p><p>“One can hope,” Turtle smiled. “With her is our newest repair technician on loan from the Sixteenth, Scatter Seelie.”</p><p>“Skittle,” they corrected. “Neutral pronouns, if’n you please.”</p><p>“<em>Skittle</em> comes very highly recommended, and they will be available to each of you for upgrade consultation, though their priority will be monitoring Showa’s status for at least the next month.”</p><p>“That long?” Deco asked.</p><p>“I was <em>really</em> beat up,” said Meteor.</p><p>“Quite,” said Turtle. “Much like Repliforce, at the moment.”</p><p>She slid her big fingers over the table’s pad and the display conjured a blank three-sided screen, positioned two seats to a side. She then brought up a locally-stored image on each: every single known Repliforce officer, arranged in squares of diminishing size by rank. General and Colonel sat in large horizontal rectangles at the top, the six Majors hung beneath them in smaller squares below Colonel, and a grid of lesser officers grew smaller and denser toward the bottom until Meteor could barely see them. Diagonal red slashes marked over about half of the faces, mostly toward the top.</p><p>“This is the grand tally as of an hour ago. As you see, two Majors remain, and each headquarters is hard at work tracking them. That leaves most of the Captains, capitalized and non,” she gestured to the smaller squares, “and all known officers and allies below them. On each of your rosters you will find at least one of these fine faces. Orders from on high are to spread the love – that is, to ensure that as many Hunters as possible each get a chance to whittle this list.”</p><p>Deco raised her hand. “We aren’t taking undue attention off the other kind of Maverick, are we?”</p><p>“Some will say that,” Nouveau scowled. “Ignore them.”</p><p>“We are <em>Maverick</em> Hunters,” Turtle agreed, “not Specifically-Repliforce Hunters. That said…”</p><p>She wirelessly swapped the image back to her personal archive and ran it on a cycle through a few images: miscellaneous wreckage, piles of Knot Berets, humans in suits pinning medals on reploids, and enormous flag-waving crowds. Many of the flags in the crowd shots were Brazilian, even within frame of obviously non-Brazilian landmarks. Everyone in the room knew why.</p><p>“We are still enjoying extensive and enthusiastic support from national militaries, above and beyond anything I can remember, for one reason: the world has seen what becomes of an alternative to us. People want Repliforce <em>extinct</em>, even if they themselves had no relatives in Rio, and Halcyon is positively torquing himself to make it happen.”</p><p>“How responsible of him,” Meteor rolled her eyes. Skittle snickered.</p><p>“Leave politics at the door, please,” said Turtle. “We have only one Commander at a time, and he is ours, until such time as he isn’t. And <em>until</em> that time, we give the world what it wants. Understood, Fourth?”</p><p>A brief wave of out-of-sync confirmations filled the room.</p><p>“Under<em>stood</em>, Fourth?”</p><p>“Yes Ma’am,” Meteor chorused with the others.</p><p>Turtle cued up a globe map. Lights sparked on a slew of targets. “Now. We’re officially on ‘post-war’ footing, so your rosters aren’t quite as packed. Just four to this ten-day. Stay safe out there.”</p><p>Meteor, Deco, and Batteram headed to different terminals as Skittle flitted around the globe with their chin in one hand. Each hardware console was a secure link to sensitive files; even in the twenty-second century, data access was simply safer “in person.” Before Meteor could check her new assignments, however, Nouveau crossed his wrists behind his back and strolled over to her.</p><p>“I’m still the Unit Analysis officer too,” he said, “so the commentary on each entry is mine. You might be a B on paper for now, Meteor, but no damned Maverick can erase your experience. I wouldn’t insult you with make-works, and yet I wouldn’t have given you these if I felt they were beyond you. When you choose, choose well.”</p><p>Meteor nodded at Nouveau’s form of encouragement. She accessed her roster.</p><p>
  <em>Time to see who needs retirement.</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:</p><p>"Abel City"</p><p>A planned city in County Wexford, Ireland, founded after Irish Unification by climate refugees from elsewhere on the coasts, primarily Dublin. Abel City advanced rapidly, priding itself on only the most modern construction methods and attracting high-technology firms from the United States, Mexico, and the European Union. Its most famous son, Dr. Cain, established the first CainLabs campus at the edge of the city, and there produced the first reploids before establishing franchise factories across the globe.</p><p>Cosmopolitan, super-modern, and politically neutral, Abel City was a natural choice for the first Maverick Hunter Headquarters -- though not without some controversy as to how much Cain himself benefited financially from the Oversight Council's decision.</p><p>After the Day of Sigma, the Hunters relocated their primary base of operations to Geneva and soon took on a greater global peacekeeping role in addition to anti-Maverick operations. They maintained the footprint of the base's former hub as Memorial Hall: a place of remembrance for all who had perished in the Maverick War and all that Abel City specifically had lost in Sigma's opening strike.</p><p>Many years later, the Oversight Council chose Abel City as the central headquarters of the newly-formed Repliforce. It was from there, and indeed from Memorial Hall itself, that General launched his global campaign for reploid independence.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Fairy Circle</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meteor preps for work with the assistance of her lunatic luna moth engineer.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>MHHQ2-4 DUTY ROSTER (RETIREMENT)</p><p>RANK [B], [LT.] [METEOR SHOWA]</p><p>[10-Day] PERIOD STARTING [September 2, 21XX]</p><p>Unit Analysis Officer [NOUVEAU]</p><p> </p><p>ARBOR ELK (B-Class, high)</p><p>&gt;Known Weaponry:</p><p>Antlers, Arbor Wall, Logger Axe</p><p>&gt;Personality:</p><p>Strong, silent type. Clearly cares more for reploids than humans.</p><p>&gt;Commentary:</p><p>Straightforward, this. Elk managed a sawmill and its surrounding artificial forest in the Ouachita Mountains until three weeks ago, when he killed every human worker and started taking in Repliforce sympathizers. We’ve been a little too busy deal with him, but now it seems he’s harboring Repliforce officers and enlisted, which makes him a priority for retirement. I nearly put him on my own roster, but you’re a better match to his WEAPON system. You’re welcome. Just stay clear of his axe.</p><p> </p><p>FREEZER OSTENOPS (B-Class)</p><p>&gt;Known Weaponry:</p><p>Cold Breath, Fan Cooling, Fluid Lockdown</p><p>&gt;Personality:</p><p>Erudite, likely to go straight for weaknesses.</p><p>&gt;Commentary:</p><p>A disgraced academic who made the surprisingly stupid decision of being vocally pro-Repliforce. He got himself arrested for sedition, but the day Final Weapon fell, leftover Repliforce broke him out. With his help, they captured his old workplace – a deep-freeze bio-vault at the University of Larsen in the South Shetlands – and are holding it ransom in exchange for amnesty for all ex-Repliforce. Frankly, that won’t happen, and every day they stay there the university and the vault are at greater risk. Confer with local forces and then retire the professor, ideally with minimal damage to the vault.</p><p> </p><p>HELLPIGS THREE (B-Class, high)</p><p>&gt;Known Weaponry:</p><p>Fire Breath, Gore, Stampede</p><p>&gt;Personality:</p><p>Belligerent.</p><p>&gt;Commentary:</p><p>Here’s one fresh from the inbox. Three giant boar mechaniloids used as prey for high-level sportsmen broke out of containment and killed twenty-nine people in the, I kid you not, ‘Happy Adventurer Hunting Experience’ in the middle of the Atacama Desert. The park’s owner is one Corona Sphynx – with a Y – an independently wealthy reploid and a significant financial contributor to the Hunters. She has requested our assistance in this matter, specifically from someone who can “handle a little fire,” and it would be… <em>impolitic</em> to refuse her. Retire her safari pigs before they wander into somewhere important.</p><p> </p><p>LIEGE ITERATTON (B-Class)</p><p>&gt;Known Weaponry:</p><p>Command Thrall, Incisors, Infection Legion, Multiply Plague</p><p>&gt;Personality:</p><p>Megalomaniac, presumed viral.</p><p>&gt;Commentary:</p><p>We’ve taken this mission off HQ4’s workload. Iteratton used to be a C-class sneak thief, but during the war he fell in with a Maverick cell. With their assistance he incorporated Pararoid tech into his rat drones, which lets him control affected reploid bodies, and used it to take over an arcology complex in rural Oklahoma. Every human worker is dead and every reploid and mechaniloid in the area is enthralled. We’re unsure of his end goal, but recent atmospheric tests show that the entire property’s harvest is now unfit for human consumption. Don’t spare your fire.</p><p>#</p><p>Meteor weighed her options. This was always the hardest part. Her armament was diminished, but her nigh-infinite-use Meteor Melter was enough to clear most missions on its own, so mere equipment shortage oughtn’t inform her choice, and then there was determining priority among similar targets, which if she was being honest leaned her toward the university op, but mechaniloids made for a better calibration of her new limits…</p><p>“Forcing yourself to decide already?” Skittle asked at her shoulder.</p><p>“I mean, I’m an hour out from near-dead and I’m not in a hurry, but…”</p><p>“But you’re a nerdy workaholic?” Skittle pleasantly batted their eyelids.</p><p>“Hush.”</p><p>“There is some wisdom in a measured pace after such injury,” Turtle added. “You’re not X and we’re not on crisis footing. Have you even visited your quarters since you woke up?”</p><p>“Maybe later,” Meteor deflected. “I’d just like to get back to work, Ma’am.”</p><p>“As you will, Lieutenant.”</p><p>“I’ll make sure she doesn’t flood her engine,” said Skittle, resting their elbow on Meteor’s shoulder. “C’mon, let’s at least get you geared up before you go on a shakedown mission.”</p><p>“Ohhhh no you don’t,” Deco marched over on a mission of her own, all smiles, “don’t you even <em>think</em> of leaving this room without a hug, Meteor Showa.”</p><p>Deco’s arms were around Meteor before she could object. She was petite for a reploid, average on human terms. She still lifted Meteor, some four or five times her mass, clear off the floor. Skittle fluttered off erratically.</p><p>“MmmmmnnnNNG!” Deco set her down. “There. I was so worried for you! We all were, in fact, and I didn’t want you running out to another mission fresh from the slab without you hearing that.”</p><p>Meteor rolled a shoulder. “I think your hug said it all.”</p><p>Deco giggled. “Brother made me take down the welcome-home banners, otherwise you’d have known it the second you came back.”</p><p>“They were blocking cameras,” Nouveau snipped.</p><p>“Oh <em>pbbbth</em>,” Deco razzed with an actual tongue, “letting our unit family know they’re valued is more important. Like when we all pitched in to get that nice bottle of Tulsa thirty-three red for Volt’s birthday!”</p><p>Batteram stoically nodded, not looking up from reading his own roster.</p><p>Nouveau pinched between his eyes. “This is neither the time nor the place, Sister.”</p><p>“It’s <em>always</em> the time,” Deco dismissed him with a wave. “Don’t listen to him, Mimi, the place wasn’t the same without you. He just has no respect for how other people cope.” She took Meteor’s hand as platonically as a cube. “I know you like this part of the job, but don’t think you <em>have</em> to rush off to prove anything. We didn’t miss your Rank, we didn’t miss your seniority, we didn’t miss your record. We missed <em>you</em> – who <em>you</em> are, not what you can do to Mavericks. Don’t forget that. Okay?”</p><p>Deco’s perceptiveness was what Meteor liked most about her. Being the unit’s Combat Analysis officer went hand in hand with being a personality-reader extraordinaire. She might have gotten overbearing sometimes, but she built scaffolding under psychological holes Meteor didn’t even know were there.</p><p>“I won’t, Deco.”</p><p>“Promise?”</p><p>“Yes, Deco.”</p><p>“Cross your heart?”</p><p>“And hope not to die of hugs.”</p><p>Deco giggled again and backed off, holding her hands behind her back and bending a little at the waist. “All right, all right. I’ll get my best staffers to follow up on your missions, so come to me after each one if you want to know how great you did.”</p><p>“I will, thanks.”</p><p>Skittle followed her out. The immediate hall was empty.</p><p>“Nice girl,” Skittle noted. “So is she broken or just deluded, like?”</p><p>“Don’t make fun of her,” Meteor snapped. “Some people can just be happy. There’s nothing wrong with them.”</p><p>“Hah. If you’re <em>that</em> bubbly after the year we’ve had, you’re not paying attention. Now let’s get you kitted, yeah?”</p><p>#</p><p>If a mechaniloid was damaged, it went to a mechanic. If a reploid was injured, they went to a medic. The main differences were bedside manner and surroundings appropriate for sapient beings.</p><p>Maverick Hunters practically made personal injury their job, whether it came to reploids in combat or humans caught in the chaos, and so they boasted the best medics in the world. Most of them were identical male-types in white and green: the Lifesaver series, designed and produced by the Hunters themselves. State militaries and major metropolitan hospitals coveted them and paid enormously for their services. They were the proud public faces of the 16<sup>th</sup> Research and Development Unit, keeping appreciation (and occasional rental fees) flowing with their passionate dedication, saintly kindness, and unshakeable resolve.</p><p>It was therefore arresting for Meteor, following Skittle through the 4<sup>th</sup>’s medical wing, to see every single Lifesaver giving the four-foot fluttering fairy a very wide berth. One ordinarily stoic doctor flattened his back against a wall.</p><p>Meteor and Skittle entered a roundabout in the wide halls that was built around a central lift shaft. The shaft’s walls were glass except for the door-slider mechanisms and the four-corner magnetic lift conduits running from ceiling to floor. They stepped on, tapped a floor number and rode the round platform up.</p><p>“You seem popular,” she said.</p><p>“What, Miss History Program, don’t you get the same, like?”</p><p>“Not quite like this…”</p><p>The lift stopped on the surgery floor. The floor was spacious to allow easier movement for typical reploid proportions. Halls branched away, but most of the walls were as transparent as the shaft, offering a view into active repairs or immobile patients.</p><p>Skittle flew out like they owned the place. Lifesavers at work began noticing and promptly increased the opacity of their windows to black. Skittle found one slower on the uptake and knocked on the glass.</p><p>“Ding-dong, Aitch-Forty, bring out’cher dead!”</p><p>The doctor inside waved a hand and the glass went black. Undaunted, Skittle spun around.</p><p>“Wotcher, Ay-One-Thirteen!” They called out.</p><p>One of the Lifesavers on the opposite side of the donut dropped his datapad with a start. Skittle cackled.</p><p>“Okay,” Meteor gave up, “what exactly are you known for here?”</p><p>“Oh, just this one thing.” Skittle twiddled a pinky finger in their long pointed earcap. “See, some G-Class ex-Mossad mindjacker tried to copy Geneva’s replibrain Rho and make her into a virus propagation vector, but I thwarted them by copying her into my own DNA with warp recursion and a handful of incandescent lightbulb filaments oh would you look at your <em>face!</em>” They held their gut and laughed, somersaulting backwards in midair.</p><p>Meteor went stonefaced. “That would seriously be only the third weirdest thing you’ve ever done.”</p><p>“I know, right?” Skittle flitted upside down and let their legs splay out. “But no, seriously, I saved the world once.”</p><p>“Uh-huh.”</p><p>Skittle crossed their arms and re-oriented to recline luxuriously in midair. “Oh See-One-Thirty-Seven?”</p><p>A Lifesaver trying to look busy at a desk terminal jolted forward in his seat.</p><p>“Remind me,” Skittle sweetly singsonged, “how many of you did Trapdoor Spinner’s little cyberworm get?”</p><p>“Everyone on this floor.”</p><p>“Yyyyoooouuurrr…” Skittle prompted.</p><p>“Your Highness,” C-137 groaned.</p><p>“And it didn’t gnaw any farther through your ill-conceived global monoculture model becaaaaause?”</p><p>“Because you treated each of us individually.”</p><p>Skittle pursed their lips, waiting.</p><p>“… After physically and signally isolating us from the Lifesaver network.”</p><p>Skittle jutted their chin out and rolled their wrist.</p><p>“… By teleporting this entire floor of the building into the ocean.”</p><p>Skittle beckoned.</p><p>The unlucky Lifesaver looked straight at Meteor. “After converting the power conduits in the ceiling and floor into a makeshift warp dais array and routing <em>our own infected LIFE cells</em> through them to balance the mass equation and project the warp shell sixteen kilometers Due East. <em>In nine minutes. From scraps.</em>”</p><p>Meteor absorbed that. On further consideration, there <em>was</em> that unexplained renovation a couple months ago.</p><p>“Okay, maybe the second-weirdest.”</p><p>The light went out behind C-137’s eyes. “It was full of stars…”</p><p>“Yeah yeah yeah,” Skittle rotated back upright and fluttered toward a far door, evidently bored with the exchange.</p><p>“Uh, Your Highness,” A-113 called, “that goes to the quarantine cells?”</p><p>Skittle made a flippant little gesture as they stood in the doorway. “Right, the restraint system taps are supermax-quality. Can’t get a more stable power feed this side of the You Screwed Up rooms!” They puckered their lips, made the decrescendo <em>dew-dew-dew-dew</em> sound of emergency warp beam-out extraction, and fluttered backwards out of sight. Their voice carried surprisingly well over the instant cartoon-like clamor of rapid mechanical disassembly. “<em>I’ll hook ‘em up to some nice toys by this time tomorrow, all for my good good buddy Meteor Showa!</em>”</p><p>Every single Lifesaver that Meteor could see turned to her. Some lightened the opacity of their surgery room glass just to stare at her.</p><p>The metallic clamor paused. Skittle peered around the corner. “Well don’t just stand there, c’mon in!”</p><p>Meteor hurried to comply under the withering glares of identical faces.</p><p>#</p><p>In a matter of seconds, Skittle had already jimmied open a heavy sliding door and gotten to work removing floor panels inside and outside it. The quarantine cells were essentially large closets for holding potentially erratic patients under observation. Sometimes Meteor thought Skittle belonged in one.</p><p>“So tell me,” they tipped their goggles over their eyes, “you like your body?”</p><p>“Um?”</p><p>“Frame-wise. Feels lighter, right? I can fix that, <em>or</em> I can make it better.” They flicked a setting on the goggles and the lenses went black. “Best to suss out your wants right now, so I can start pondering weapon balance.”</p><p>“Skittle, I’m broke. You said so yourself.”</p><p>“Yeah, and I know you,” they tapped their forehead while fishing around in a belt pocket and taking out what appeared to be a candy-striped bendy straw stuck in an orange, “you’ll be rolling in zenny before long. Point is, since you’ve been cut to the quick, you can build out in a whole new way if you like. The choices boil down to armor, flex, and shields. So,” they squeezed the orange and a bright cutting torch spurted from the straw, “got opinions?”</p><p>Meteor stared at her friend as they idly carved the floor with the most ridiculous tool she’d ever seen. It was par for the course when dealing with Scatter Seelie.</p><p>“All right,” Meteor rolled with it, “tell me about flex.”</p><p>Skittle paused their work and stuck a small disc on the wall. They tapped it twice, and a life-size holo of Meteor’s skeletal chassis – projected sideways, of course – flickered out. It featured an overlay emphasizing joints and various subdermal geometry. She took a step back to avoid it clipping through her.</p><p>“Flex Architecture,” said her engineer. “It’s wonderful stuff, highly recommended. Not only does it improve reflexes, it lets your body stay together under abuse.”</p><p>“So if I had a lot of it, I wouldn’t have come back as thrashed as I was?”</p><p>“Oh hell no, your particular thrasher would’ve sent you back in a bunch of little tins. Flex comes at the <em>expense</em> of sturdiness. Your armor’s what saved your life.”</p><p>Meteor frowned. “Then why should I even consider anything else?”</p><p>“Because maybe if you had something else, you’d have left on your own two feet?” Skittle shrugged and returned to deconstructing the floor, cutting out perfect squares and tossing them aside. “Frames geared to flex don’t typically fall apart until the LIFE cell does. Depending on how much you invest, if you get ravaged again you’ll – probably – keep your limbs on and working right up ‘til you pop. Think of it this way. Armor protects your bits. Shields protect your bits. Flex? Lets you <em>keep</em> your bits.”</p><p>“Well good. I like my bits where they are.”</p><p>“Don’t we all.”</p><p>Meteor thought a moment. “So what about armor?”</p><p>“Looking to go back the way you were?” Skittle went on flame-cutting, now revealing power conduits. “Can’t say I blame you. You had some nice hide.”</p><p>“And I’m sure you were entirely professional with it.”</p><p>“Wholly, Meteor, nothing profane.” They snapped their fingers and her holo-schematic flicked to display the outer bulk she once had. “Solid Plating is your go-to. Reduces damage, absorbs shock…”</p><p>“Shock?” Parallel articulative elements in Meteor’s broad head moved to give her an emotive forehead scrunch. “My old armor didn’t do much of that.”</p><p>“Technology marches on,” Skittle twirled a finger in the air. “Each layer’s an overall damage reduction with – what’s this bloody thing made of, tungsten? – commensurate increase in kinetic absorption. Less knockback, less kickback.”</p><p>“No drawback?”</p><p>“None you don’t already know. Armor-piercing ordinance won’t take no for an answer, and favoring armor means expecting to get hit in the first place. Do try not to.”</p><p>“Didn’t plan on it.” Meteor side-leaned on the wall outside the door, idly swishing her tail. “Did the war move shield tech forward too?”</p><p>“Oh, war’s always a boon to research, like.” As Skittle continued speaking, they stowed the welder orange, hefted an armload of small floor panels, flitted out the door with them and made a neat stack. “Thanks to all the upgrade tech that ol’ Grandpa X keeps picking up from classified-knows-where, shields are better than they’ve ever been, and right now Barrier Extenders are all the rage. You can get a nice extra second or two on your flash, plus faster cycle-up time for the next flash, if you invest enough.”</p><p>Meteor stayed out of their way as they went back and forth like a bee, moving panels. “That’s all? Can’t you make my shields… I dunno, harder? Or fire on a lighter impact?”</p><p>Skittle laughed. They moved the sticky projector to the ceiling, took out somewhat more conventional tools and rapidly started cutting into the quarantine cell’s thick walls. “There’s only so much even I can fit into one body, like. Besides, a frame your size? You don’t need a shield setup like I do. I mean look at me!” Skittle kicked out a leg. It started with armor like puffy white shorts, continued with a light purple limb, and ended with a white and opalescent half-calf armor boot. “My boots don’t even go to my <em>knees</em> for Chrissakes!”</p><p>“Come on,” Meteor angled her head, “shields like yours could’ve really helped me last week.”</p><p>“Not at what it’d cost. You <em>don’t</em> want to put all your caviar in one basket, Meteor. One hard counter and you’ll be worse off than you were.”</p><p>“That’s not a no, Skittle.”</p><p>“It’s not a no, it’s <em>academic</em>,” they irritably reached behind the cell’s wall and made dismantling noises. “My tier of Haptic Protection broadcast density trades the outer armor layer for a silkscreen of projectors. It leaves the body with <em>nothing else</em>. If my shield battery ran out, I could be dented with a baseball bat. And lest you’ve forgotten,” they turned their head to her while their hands continued working, “there are people out there who can treat shields like <em>fog</em>. Not just attackers patient enough to wait for the downcycle, but absolute monsters who can time their hits <em>through the refresh rate</em> or hit for real damage <em>before the blink</em>. And not just big names like Zero or Rezador, but that Maverick who so <em>deftly</em> filleted you and slapped you on the goddamn <em>grill!</em>”</p><p>A big section of wall dismounted, thundered on the floor, fell through Meteor’s upside-down schematic and crashed into the opposite wall at a low angle, scraping and denting the surface. Before it stopped making noise Skittle threw off their goggles, grabbed both sides of Meteor’s face and stared into her eyes. Meteor stared back into their sparkly purple pools and saw a yawning abyss behind their pupils.</p><p>“Listen to me.” The Welsh fairy-moth’s attitude had transmuted to the deadly solemnity of an archfey. “Your frame composition’s already weak to edged ceratanium. If not for your armor I’d have bid my oldest friend farewell, do you understand? There is no goddamned way in this trash fire of a world that I’m stripping you bare and throwing you to the seagulls wearing nothing but an energy skirt. I couldn’t.” Their fingertips pressed harder. “If I lost you to an overhaul I’d made, I’d lose me to the dark, I would. I couldn’t <em>handle</em> it.”</p><p>They let go with a push, crossed their arms and turned their back on her. “Barrier Extenders I can do, ‘cause they’d make even Zero have to think, but I’m not giving you a thicker field or a twitchier flash. They’re too easy to cheese. Don’t ask me again.”</p><p>Meteor rubbed her cheek. “I won’t,” she quietly replied.</p><p>Skittle fluttered silently, everything but their wings fixed in three dimensions. At length their posture relaxed like nothing had happened and they ruffled the back of their head.</p><p>“Now what’s left, what’s left… oh right. Catch.”</p><p>Skittle reached to one of many belt pockets and tossed Meteor a beam saber hilt. She snatched it out of the air. There was glitter on it.</p><p>“Made that one with my feet, just to prove I could. Try it.”</p><p>Meteor glanced at Skittle’s permanently affixed boots before snapping the saber alight. It was thirty centimeters of low-phase plasma, Easter-pastel purple. She twiddled it in her fingers, adding a faint glow to the walls before snapping it off.</p><p>“Aw, just a short lo-beam?” She gratefully teased. “And no quickcharge holsters?”</p><p>“Do I <em>look</em> like I’m made of zenny, fishflake? Besides, I already paid for your buster.”</p><p>“I have a buster?” Meteor looked at her arm.</p><p>“Yeah, only two-level charge-up, but good for punching holes. Deadly, if you’re smart with your dash.”</p><p>“I have a dash too?” Meteor looked at her legs.</p><p>Skittle sweetly held their chin in their hands. “Would this face lie to you?”</p><p>“Then why can’t I feel it?”</p><p>“<em>Tsk</em>, knew I forgot something. Look at me.” Skittle snapped their fingers.</p><p>A flash of data—</p><p>#</p><p>DYNAMIC NEURAL ARRAY SUMMARY</p><p>SSKN27-KS04 “METEOR SHOWA”</p><p>[CHASSIS]: Anthropomorph, fish (Cyprinus rubrofuscus)</p><p>[FRAME]: Titanium-X alloy (81%), SSK proprietary tungsten alloys (14%), SSK proprietary aluminum alloys (4%), SSK proprietary carbon filiament (1%)</p><p>[WEAPONRY]:</p><p>&gt;Core WEAPON template “Meteor Melter”</p><p>&gt;Charge Buster (b) [UNLOCKED]</p><p>[OUTFITTED WITH]:</p><p>&gt;EAS-Alpha [UNLOCKED]</p><p>[VWES-4]:</p><p>&gt;[field empty, install ready] [UNLOCKED]</p><p>[HUNTER RANK]: B</p><p>#</p><p>—hit her. She blinked away the momentary disorientation.</p><p>“Unlocked?”</p><p>“Precaution, like. A couple full-on wars and a bucket of crises ago we had the virus to worry about, remember? You’re clean, though, don’t worry. Not only no trace of the old bad brain-bender, but not a twitch toward any predicted permutations. We know the Maverick Virus family up and down and sideways now. I just, uh, forgot to release the lock after I confirmed you hadn’t caught it off the swordbug. Sorry.”</p><p>“No harm done,” Meteor lied. Even thinking about what the virus could do to a reploid was horrible.</p><p>“Right. So.” Skittle shed their various toolbelts with a cluttery clatter and joined Meteor back in the quarantine hall. “All this can wait on what you’re up for, I just needed my hands busy.”</p><p>“You tore up a cell to help you think?”</p><p>“It’ll be a great upgrade center soon, I promise!”</p><p>“Ugh. Leaving it in that state will bug me all day.”</p><p>“Just leave it, it’ll keep.”</p><p>“It’s a mess and it’s right in front of me,” Meteor declared with finality. She reached around the wall panel for a grip and backed it to the door. It dragged screechingly. She lifted it awkwardly like a big framed painting and sidled out with her head tilted back and her throat pressed to the surface.</p><p>“Psh. You work like a bloody Protestant, you do.”</p><p>“Hush or help, Skittle,” Meteor strained.</p><p>“Illusion of choice! I can do neither. See? I’m doing it. <em>Neither neither neitherrrr</em>,” they sang.</p><p>Meteor set the panel down in the hall. “You’re a piece of work.”</p><p>“I’m a <em>whole</em> work, thank you. So, want to hit a sim for a feel of your new balance or get straight to the list?”</p><p>“And here I thought you knew me.”</p><p>“Hah! So who’ll we be visiting, then?”</p><p>Meteor looked askance at them. “We?”</p><p>“I <em>am</em> your handler for now, after all.”</p><p>“I’ve never needed one.”</p><p>“Look, you’re a work in progress, you are, right off what’s practically a reset. Something might go wrong with you, and Blinky wants to know when and whether. I won’t tag along on your every mission, though, nobody’s got time for that.”</p><p>“Fine,” Meteor huffed. “Just… don’t make a spectacle of yourself, okay?”</p><p>“Whyfor?”</p><p>“I’m going to take the Hellpigs first. We’ll be working with a rich VIP.”</p><p>A Cheshire grin curled across their cheeks.</p><p>“I mean it, Skittle.” Meteor counted on your fingers, slapping each into her opposite palm, “No pranks, no insults, no maudlin observations, no turning coffee-makers into mortars, and absolutely no glitter!”</p><p>“Sheesh, Mom, you’re no fun,” they pouted.</p><p>She mocked them right back with a snooty lockjaw, “I will turn this mission right around, young enby, do not test me.”</p><p>“Heh heh.”</p><p>Meteor’s favorite mad scientist flitted to her side, their always-peaked energy settling to a plateau as they linked their fingers and rested them on her shoulder.</p><p>“Thanks for not dying, Meteor. I like having you around, I do. Not a lot of people get me like you.”</p><p>“You never let a lot try.”</p><p>“Hey, if they can’t take my worst, they’re not worth me, full stop.” They pushed off and flitted back to the med bay. “See you at the pad.”</p><p>She watched them go, then took a moment for herself in the quiet.</p><p>So much had happened so quickly. Back when she joined the Hunters, back when she had her first squadmates, first horrors, first losses… all she could do was tread water and hope the current was kind. But she adapted fast, and darn it she’d do it again. She would be what was needful, and what the world needed most was fewer Mavericks. The alternative was letting people go without her. Hoarding the resource she knew she was. Leaving people to the inefficient mercies of chance and risking their memory being buried by history. Wasting their hopes for better.</p><p><em>There’s too much of that in the world as it is,</em> Meteor knew.</p><p>She had a responsibility to preserve what she could. A duty.</p><p>She held herself high and marched out to meet it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:</p><p>“Unit Structure”</p><p>The Maverick Hunters’ first organizational structure reflected their relatively limited role. They were primarily emergency responders to incidents of violent irregularity in reploids or mechaniloids – active problems beyond the ability of local law enforcement to control.</p><p>Imanga Valdivieso, founder of the organization and the first Maverick Hunter General Officer (colloquially “Maverick Hunter Commander”), saw farther than most. She warned of the need for high-powered operatives with an advanced state of readiness and force projection, much more than the Oversight Council initially mandated, because one day the world would surely need to counter Mavericks who were organized and/or who wielded more destructive power than any human could face. Her concerns were dismissed as theoretical until the first large-scale simultaneous Maverick incident (the "Eight Crisis") taxed Hunter capabilities to their limit.</p><p>Subsequent Maverick Hunter General Officers reorganized the units. They reached their current form under X’s brief tenure following the defeat of Sigma.</p><p>- 0th Special Forces (Shinobi): Immediate-priority, high-risk, high-value operations<br/>- 1st Advance: Rapid response; first-strike operations; opening/preparation of operative sites/areas/theaters for other units<br/>- 2nd Reconnaissance: Generalist surveillance; infiltration; intelligence, counter-intelligence<br/>- 3rd Deploy Corps: Inter-base movement of equipment, material, high-number personnel; asset/infrastructure fabrication and management<br/>- 4th Overland: Generalist, all-environment combat<br/>- 5th Communications: Communication security; cybersecurity; officer navigation; public relations<br/>- 6th Marine Armada: Aquatic combat; oceanic surveillance<br/>- 7th Air Cavalry: Aerial combat; atmospheric surveillance<br/>- 8th Armored Battalion: Heavy ground combat; heavy vehicle logistics<br/>- 9th Special Forces (Ranger): Remote-area, low-support operations; sabotage<br/>- 10th Special Forces (Civic): High-population operations; disaster response; collateral damage management/mitigation<br/>- 11th Space Command: Orbital operations; orbital station defense; space surveillance<br/>- 12th Tropical Region: Equatorial/torrid area operations; low-ecological-collateral operations<br/>- 13th Polar Region: Polar/frigid area operations; low-ecological-collateral operations<br/>- 14th Grapple Combat: Close-quarter engagement operations; single-hostile retirement<br/>- 15th Artillery Command: Ranged engagement operations; massed-hostile retirement; high-yield weapon management<br/>- 16th Research and Development: Personnel repair; reploid study; experimental reploid/asset production; experimental science<br/>- 17th Elite: Emergency response; retirement of Maverick Hunter traitors<br/></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Mission 1: Hellpigs Three</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meteor (with Skittle's assistance) takes on her first mission after near-death, only to find the parameters change.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The sun threatened to rise over the Atacama Desert. Meteor could tell this immediately by the giant panoramic windows facing her receiving teleport pad. The lowest stars outside evaporated into a purple and blue gradient over the distant Andes roughening the horizon. Much closer foothills lay in the long shadows over the magnificent desolation.</p><p>“Wow.”</p><p>Skittle snorted. “Just Ganymede with more colors.”</p><p>The windows wrapped the room, the view broken only by a terminal beside the pad. Meteor took it all in; sparkles of salt flats and distant building roofs brought her down to earth. “Uh-huh, like you’ve ever been offworld.”</p><p>“Sure I’ve done! Mining world company paid me to, fella in charge said ‘Now Skittle, <em>somebody’s</em> gotta lick all the rocks—’” Skittle elbowed her. “Oop. Heads up.”</p><p>Meteor turned around and saw a tall silver sphynx cat coming up a spiral staircase. Her wine-red and sand-beige armor looked fit for a safari, complete with little armored pockets and a front seam like a button-up shirt.</p><p>“My <em>my</em>,” the cat reploid complimented with an aristocratic affect, “such prompt service! I’ll have to up this year’s donation, aha-ha.”</p><p>Meteor straightened up. “Happy to serve. Meteor Showa, Veracruz Fourth. <em>Assisting</em> me is Scatter Seelie, Veracruz Sixteenth.”</p><p>“Howdy,” said Skittle.</p><p>The cat smiled like new money and shook Meteor’s hand like old. “Corona Sphynx, proprietress, such a <em>pleasure</em> to have you at the Happy Adventurer Hunting Experience. I <em>just</em> got confirmation that you picked up my request. Did you enjoy the view?”</p><p>Meteor could tell from Sphynx’s hands that she was either filthy freaking rich or built by someone who was. They looked like human hands dipped in silver silk with subtle seams over the knuckles. The way her armor <em>fitted</em> around her neck rather than her neck starting at her armor was another giveaway. Futurists kept jabbering about how someday any reploid would be able to look like a human below the neck, but in the real world the price for even <em>basic</em> endoconstructive body modification still started in the low millions…</p><p>Sphynx’s pupils dilated at her with interest.</p><p>Knowing how money valued courtesy, Meteor clapped her other hand over her hostess’s and respectfully dipped her head.</p><p>“It’s an honor, ma’am! I’ve heard so much about your fine establishment. It’s a shame my first visit has to be under these circumstances. I’ve never found the time or the money to be one of your customers, to my great regret.”</p><p>Sphynx beamed, gracefully withdrawing her hand and laying her fingertips on her chest. “And to my great loss, clearly. It’s <em>so</em> refreshing to see a Hunter who knows quality when she sees it.”</p><p>“Your mechaniloids must be high-quality, too, to need someone like the Hunters to take care of them.”</p><p>“Oh you’ve <em>no</em> idea, dear.”</p><p>Sphynx walked – <em>strutted</em> – to the terminal and keyed something in. One of the panoramic windows blinked away from the view to show pre-recorded footage. Seen from a high angle above some sort of hangar door, a human shouldering some sort of fat shotgun fiddled with the access pad while three other similarly-armed humans stood well back. The doors trundled open.</p><p>“It wasn’t a breakout so much as a release,” said Sphynx, flicking her slender tail back and forth. “You see, a few of my customers were dissatisfied with the quality of the prey I set out for them and thought they’d be cheeky by freeing the big game.”</p><p>A giant red-brown head rammed out of the hangar and its shoulders bowed the door out. It struggled through the impediment as the humans pointed their guns at it and fired plasma shots. The attacks only drew the behemoth’s attention when it broke free. It turned on the gunners and opened a set of jaws unlike any pig Meteor had ever seen.</p><p>“Americans,” Sphynx sighed at the ensuing carnage. Meteor was glad for the lack of audio.</p><p>The footage switched to the schematic of a monstrous mechaniloid. It wasn’t on-model to a boar; the legs were too long, for one thing. For another, the piggy-snouted mouth was too big and open-cheeked, more like a wolf’s or a bear’s in shape. The stomach had an inset graphic that Skittle flew up to scrutinize.</p><p>“Their default behavior is the utmost savagery,” said Sphynx. “They were designed for territorial control, basic <em>lad</em> – locate, approach, destroy. The fools who let them loose had no way of setting their friend-or-foe targeting.”</p><p>“Or their matter reclamation,” Skittle sounded impressed.</p><p>“Their what?” Meteor looked up.</p><p>“Look here,” they thumbed at the inset. “It’s like liquid induction, but for solids, and not for sensory funsies but actual <em>function</em>. The intake system disintegrates matter with a molecular torch and then siphons the energy into the somatic regulator – the fuel tank. You know how that works,” they reinforced like a teacher, “if tank draw’s what’s keeping your cell fed and healthy, you don’t need solar. Your brain doesn’t even need a down-cycle. And if you can just <em>eat</em> your own tank full, you can theoretically operate anywhere forever without sunlight<em> or</em> sleep. Ever.”</p><p>Meteor casually turned her head to Sphynx. “That must have been expensive.”</p><p>“Oh, fabulously so.”</p><p>“I’ve heard that sort of thing is illegal on civilian mechaniloids.”</p><p>“Then it’s a good thing they’re a business expense and not pets,” Sphynx smiled with her eyes. “Tessellated graphene and accumulative energy generation are all well and good for the small fry, but the big game here have the same energy needs as you or I.”</p><p>“And yet I don’t have a stomach,” said Meteor. “Most people would say that giving one to <em>any</em> reploid or mechaniloid is irresponsible, for obvious reasons.”</p><p>“More’s the pity! Matter reclamation is a great savings on restorative infrastructure, and environmentally sound besides. Every week I have my darling pigs nibble the desert clear of mechaniloid wreckage after the customers are safely gone. Oh, such a shame what they’ve done.” Sphynx’s voice lilted briefly into sadness and then right back out. “I’d have calmed them down by now, but the fools who released them set them on maximum hostility, so it’s frankly less hassle to just retire them. I can always buy more.”</p><p><em>Typical</em>.</p><p>“Please excuse my forwardness,” Meteor ingratiatingly clasped her hands, “but if you have to go so out of your way to keep such dangerous mechaniloids from killing your customers, then how do you stay in business?”</p><p>Sphynx threw out her arms and turned a 180 like she was on stage.</p><p>“The danger <em>is</em> the business, dear. Who would bother trekking all the way out here for a mere shooting gallery? Now before you object,” she daintily wagged a finger, “understand that I’ve had this conversation with the past several years of Hunter leadership, not to mention the Chilean authorities. Every guest signs a liability waiver. Every adventurer enjoying the park must carry a minimum armament – for sale in the lobby, if they lack their own. It’s entirely legal. Why, Halcyon himself once took part! He still holds the time record for… the mission you’re here to undertake, actually, aha-ha.”</p><p>It sounded like a political spiderweb to Meteor. Chile did have a reputation for being a “dark Switzerland,” all too ready to be the irresponsible kind of neutral. And if Commander Halcyon was ever involved, it was best not to pry.</p><p>“I’m afraid I don’t see the appeal,” said Meteor, tactfully.</p><p>“When you’re on top of the world, dear, you look for thrills where you can.” Sphynx flapped a gossipy hand. “Besides, it gets them out of the mansion, you know?”</p><p>Meteor’s birth career was undersea construction and salvage. Her three older siblings were still manual laborers.</p><p>“I’m afraid I don’t, ma’am. With all due respect, I really should get to work.”</p><p>“Of course, of course! Your spotter is welcome to join the fun too, free of charge.”</p><p>“Just try and stop me!” Skittle grinned, jauntily giving her finger-guns.</p><p>“Exquisite! Then I’ll remain here and serve as your guide.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Meteor give her the smile of a retail clerk, “but Hunters have our own navigators.”</p><p>Sphynx volleyed back the smile of a retail customer. “Not out here, dear. I enforce a dead zone.”</p><p>“That seems… a little inadvisable. Why exclude us? Or anyone, really?”</p><p>“For no other reason than that my clientele treasures their privacy. With the eyes of so many upon them every day, it simply feels good to shed responsibilities and be out of reach for a few hours. As a result, the best interdiction fields money can buy prevent teleportation except through the pad in this building, and the entire park is quite well defended against Maverick Hunter and Interpol wavelengths.” She rubbed her hands to warm up her sales pitch, “However, if you like, I can provide a public-tier tightbeam to browse the Internet while you’re afield for just ten zenny, or a high-fidelity tier for a hundred. Up-front, of course, with triple for Extranet access.”</p><p>“No thank you. My account’s empty.”</p><p>“Mine’s not,” Skittle raised a finger.</p><p>“I’m on a mission, Skittle, I can live without Bustr for a few hours.”</p><p>“If you call that living!”</p><p>Meteor pointedly coughed. “I’ll go without, ma’am.”</p><p>“Pity.” Sphynx waved goodbye, “Well, off you go, but do stop by the gift shop on your way out!”</p><p>Meteor give her a noncommittal nod and headed down the broad stairs.</p><p>“So hey,” Skittle whispered, flitting behind her, “if she’s a cat, can she still be a bitch?”</p><p>“Hush.” She paused. “But yes.”</p><p>#</p><p>One heavy security door later, downstairs turned out to be an expansive circular lobby cut into a ring of small stores between the front entrance and a hall to the back. The door Meteor came out of was part of a central shaft covered in screens advertising arms manufacturers and tourist locations. Some shop clerks – Steel Berets, oddly enough – were starting to set up for the day’s business.</p><p><em>Sphynx must be expecting clients the minute I’m done</em>, Meteor thought.</p><p>She glanced over the stores: arms here, armors there, a photo service, model kits, and whole constellations of souvenirs. She walked by the weapon shop and skimmed the goods, finding them equal to or lesser than her own, and at a considerable markup for brand-name design.</p><p>“See anything you like?” Asked a clerk.</p><p>“Thanks, but—”</p><p>“<em>Aurgh!</em>” Skittle clutched their chest. “Bourgey shit, my one weakness!” They fluttered dramatically to the ground, gagging and croaking.</p><p>“Oh get up, we’re on the clock.” Meteor gave the clerk a sorry-about-that grin, then knelt and lifted and princess-carried Skittle out the door. As she did, she sent them a direct-text comm.</p><p>{Can you cut through the jamming?}</p><p>“<em>If I die young</em>,” Skittle sang, loudly and badly, “<em>bury me in satin, lay me down on a bed of roses</em>…”</p><p>{In my sleep, Meteor.} Their text came at the speed of thought in some florid Elizabethan font in violation of everything she knew about how text comms worked. {But it’s crazy military-tier. You can’t buy this kind ‘cause it’s not on the market. Smells like favors. If I slip through, after a few seconds she’ll notice and get snooty about it.}</p><p>{Save it, then. You’re the best.}</p><p><em>“… With the words of a love sonnnng!</em>” Skittle flitted right out of her arms. {I know.}</p><p>Rows of cybernetic palm trees and unoccupied helipads guided the two of them out into the park. At the edge of the hub complex, a static billboard with Sphynx’s face on it reminded all visitors to “Ensure all weapons are Safety-Off at all times.”</p><p>The dim yet lightening distance had less sand than she might have expected. It was barren, absolutely, but just bare dirt out to the edge of a salt flat at the foot of some hills. The immediate environs didn’t look as dangerous as advertised. They were pretty, especially the salt flat. Out there, a handful of endangered flamingos slept perched on a lumpy boulder in the middle.</p><p>A boulder with tusks.</p><p>“Miss Showa,” Sphynx called in, “can you hear me well enough?”</p><p>“I copy. I think I found the first pig already.”</p><p>“Indeed, and you’re in luck. The other two did the eating. Straw is still in sleep mode.”</p><p>“Straw?”</p><p>“Why yes. Straw, Stick, and Brick. What else would you name three pigs, dear?”</p><p>“Point taken.”</p><p>Meteor kept her approach cautious. She stepped into the still and shallow saltwater, no higher than her knees at the very deepest. Skittle’s ambient sparkles shined off the ripples she made.</p><p>Straw Hellpig was big – Bee Blader big. The flamingos seemed unbothered. She crept as close as she dared, some seven or eight meters out, and readied her buster.</p><p>“Skittle. Overwatch.”</p><p>“I’ve got you in my sights,” they growled like a grizzled veteran.</p><p>“Shut up.”</p><p>“Yes’m.” Skittle shot upward, shimmering and disappearing as they went.</p><p>Meteor charged up her buster. It passed to second-stage compression. She aimed for a spot least likely to end with dead birds.</p><p>The sun peeked over an eastern mountain, slashing the salt flat with light. Straw twitched an ear.</p><p>Meteor shot a streaking green comet of plasma into its side.</p><p>The impact made Straw’s low-grade shields give a sluggish single blink as it practically jumped to its hooves. The flamingos awoke and panicked and tumbled down and away like a dice cup of drunk dancers. Straw ignored them completely and lumbered around to Meteor. She fired a second charged shot at its face, convincing it at that yes she was in fact a thing that it was put on Earth to destroy.</p><p>It opened a mouth full of tusks and charged – fast – but even her bog-standard dash was faster, kicking up spray that twinkled in the sun. She evaded a loud low snap of jaws with plenty of clearance and fed its face another charged shot at about four meters away. The only indication that it felt the blow was the speed with which it turned its head.</p><p>It blasted her with a gout of hellish flame.</p><p>Meteor almost laughed. It was literally her element. She patiently charged up again and sent the green comet straight into Straw’s mouth.</p><p>The hellpig clapped its jaws shut, took the hit on the nose, and resumed breathing fire at her.</p><p>She sloshed her way out of the jet. Straw turned its head to keep her immolated.</p><p>Meteor stood there and took it. The water boiled.</p><p>“Skittle?”</p><p>A portion of the sky broke like a mirror into glowing shards that flew into Skittle’s outstretched, rapidly-glowing hands. Kaleidoscopic high-yield lasers blasted from their palms; they were what rainbows might have been if rendered by a bad past-century neural network. The chaotically colorful force beams scored wide hot lines into Straw’s hide, only briefly mitigated by its shield blink. Straw finally shut its mouth, looked up, appeared to reassess…</p><p>And leapt ten meters straight up.</p><p>“<em>SHIT</em>—”</p><p>The morning filled with crashing keening stuttering interference as Skittle shot out of the bite like a watermelon seed, their high-grade shields strobing like a rave and spitting flashes of energy in every direction for the breathless instant the jaws closed.</p><p>Skittle retreated vertically. Straw fell, smoking from its joints and the gouges of the beams.</p><p>Meteor lit up her short saber and timed her dash to hit the stupid pig as it splashed back to earth. She jumped and carved its shoulder and it thrashed on cue, but it swung such that the arc of its big head missed goring her, only shoving with the mass of its neck. Which Meteor then slashed on her way down. Straw reared back to stomp, but that only gave her an acre of belly to slice. She dragged the plasma blade center-mass as she dashed under and out.</p><p>That did it. Straw went up in flames, blasting apart and adding scrap to the salt flat, seasoning itself forever.</p><p>“Barbecue for DAYS you fat ham!” Skittle yelled as they fluttered down.</p><p>“Sorry,” Meteor stowed the saber on her hip, “it looked too massive to jump like that. You okay?”</p><p>“Eh, I’ve gotten clamped in worse. Shields took a real ding, though. You?”</p><p>“Cruising.”</p><p>“Then let’s roll.”</p><p>Meteor hit the comm. “Sphynx, one down.”</p><p>“I saw, most excellent!” She clapped. “Now, Stick and Brick seem to be roughly equidistant from you, the former off in the hills and the latter by a mechaniloid storage barn, but they likely won’t stay there as the sun gets higher.”</p><p>“How far?”</p><p>“About five kilometers each.”</p><p>“Fiiii~iiiivvve?” Skittle whined, sagging their shoulders.</p><p>“Just how big is this park, ma’am?”</p><p>“Well, you wouldn’t want to have to <em>walk</em> in or out, aha-ha. It doubles as a wildlife preserve, you see. Flamingos are so darling.”</p><p>
  <em>… What?</em>
</p><p>“Isn’t, um, keeping rare wildlife on a hunting range unwise?”</p><p>“Mm, no,” Sphynx thought aloud, “they’ve grown desensitized to noise, provided the live fire isn’t too close. At any rate, dear, I’m not suggesting you march all the way. I’m sending a ride. So which target shall it be? You needn’t go in storybook order, of course.”</p><p>“No reason not to,” Meteor shrugged. “Take us to Stick.”</p><p>“As you like. The beetle is on the way now.”</p><p>“Beetle?”</p><p>“Must you question everything, dear? Relax and let the course take its course. You’ll get fewer wrinkles – but aren’t I one to talk? Aha-ha!”</p><p>A twinkle from the top of the main building grew larger on the fast approach. After a moment Meteor recognized the silhouette: an old Beetron aerial survey mechaniloid, clearly modified. It was green, yellow, and iridescent all over.</p><p>“Meteor?” Skittle clasped their hands.</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“I think I’m in love.”</p><p>The Jewel Beetron came to a stop and hovered in place, boiling the brackish water under its thrusters. Its horn was clipped, the spinning blades of the base model replaced by a solid aesthetically-appropriate spike. The body was elongated over the base model, too. A thin, red-carpeted staircase unfolded down its side, leading up to a snug space behind too-small-to-be-safe safety railings.</p><p>“I want ten,” Skittle whispered. “I want a <em>sleigh</em>.”</p><p>Meteor ascend the steps. “What happened to your last one? The one with the cow skull?”</p><p>Skittle took the seat behind her. “It was a <em>horse</em> skull. Proteus said it didn’t match R&amp;D’s décor, the tasteless git.”</p><p>“Hold on tight!” Sphynx commed as the beetle took off.</p><p>#</p><p>The salt flat led to barren dirt that rose at its own pace. The sun rose fuller, and right away the temperature did as well. Meteor found the view impressive, much improved over war-made wastelands she’d seen. It was reddish and rocky and empty as heck.</p><p>The wasteland rose further and added bumps. Stick Hellpig was easy to pick out, being the only thing stirring in the morning light. Identical to its fallen family member, it seemed to be snuffling around the bottom of a valley.</p><p>“Doesn’t look like he sees us,” said Meteor. “Ready for an airdrop?”</p><p>“Hold up,” Skittle grabbed her by the dorsal fin, “I’m reading more signals concentrated on his position.”</p><p>“Sphynx?”</p><p>“Possibly something he ate,” she guessed. “Or someone. Sometimes it takes them a while to fully digest a LIFE cell.”</p><p>“Ew. Set the beetle down here, I’ll walk the rest.”</p><p>“Mind your step.”</p><p>She hopped off once the Beetron reached a safe altitude. It let her off and then up it went, higher than any pig could possibly fly.</p><p>“Signals, Skittle?”</p><p>“Gone. Just the ham-hock now.”</p><p>“What were they, Drimoles?”</p><p>“Dunno. They’re not really animalish enough for this place. Maybe they really were the undigested.”</p><p>Meteor cringed. “Lovely. Stay back for this one.”</p><p>“Planned to.”</p><p>Closing distance on Stick was almost as easy as before. It dug and dug with a front hoof, not noticing Meteor nearing from behind. Just as she got within firing range, it unearthed what looked like a leg and part of the shell of a Mega Tortoise. Stick bit it, juggled it into its mouth and crunched metal on metal without apparent effort. The noise covered her final approach.</p><p>She took two and a half steps before it went wrong.</p><p>The ground rumbled, but not from Stick. The hellpig seemed just as confused, scanned the ground for something to eat – when a giant set of curved pincers erupting from below closed on either side of its head and dragged it underground. Shearing metallic horrors emanated from the fresh pit, and then silence.</p><p>
  <em>Um.</em>
</p><p>“Oh dear,” Sphynx commed.</p><p>“Is that a <em>run away</em> ‘oh dear?’” Meteor asked.</p><p>“It’s a <em>new parameter</em> ‘oh dear.’ My autonomous security guard seems to have moved in an unexpected direction overnight.”</p><p>The pit erupted a new monster. A Worm Seeker, a chain of orange orbs and legs and crescent mandibles, extended out for several segments and bent to eye Meteor like a cobra. It seemed to have many more legs than the standard model, and all of them were sharp wedges.</p><p>Meteor opened fire. Her prior jobs both for and before the Hunters let her get very familiar with mechaniloid models, so she knew Worm Seekers had famously sensitive heads. She shot as fast as her buster allowed, but the giant centi-grub just seemed to take it…</p><p>Until it twisted independently at each joint.</p><p>The towering single mechaniloid fell apart into four: head, tail, and two body-orbs. Each had two pairs of legs, two deeply recessed eyes, and, quickly emerging, a set of pincers.</p><p>“Are you <em>kidding me</em>.”</p><p>Meteor rapidly named the family of worm pieces Head and Tail and Body 1 and 2. They fanned out to surround her.</p><p>“Sphynx, strategy?!”</p><p>“Aim for the eyes, each segment is armored!”</p><p><em>Good thing my primary doesn’t play nice with armor</em>.</p><p>Meteor stood her ground and spat a Meteor Melter grenade on a high arc. It hit Head between the eyes and rolled back, spilling thermite all the way. It ignored the damage and spat two bombs at her, each one bouncing along on ludicrous arcs. They were easy enough to zigzag around, but Body 1 and Body 2 weren’t. They came in from her sides, so she turned and dashed – right where Tail’s longer mandibles waited.</p><p>Meteor threw her forward momentum into a leap and splashed raw thermite spit over Tail on the way down. It pinched air everywhere it could, which was nowhere near her. She poured on the buster fire as her special attack cycled back up to readiness, but between the armor-eating and the sustained barrage, Tail went kaboom.</p><p>Body 1 and Body 2 charged in, single-file in front of Head, clawing up the earth. She was ready for them – but for each goshdarned one lobbing <em>more freaking bouncy-bombs</em>.</p><p>She dashed right, but Body 2 saw her coming. She spat another grenade that cracked on 2’s shell, only slowing it enough for Body 1 to barrel in and jump off it at her, sharp feet first.</p><p>Meteor was caught out with her dash and her eponymous attack both on cooldown.</p><p>Physics solutions surged through her mind.</p><p>She grabbed her saber and thrusted just as the bugball landed. The mass behind its pointed legs drove her down, but the pressure also drove her arm saber-first into one of its eyes. Her shields flashed as Body 1 exploded on top of her.</p><p>Body 2 tried the same leaping trick. She jumped upright and thrust her saber in, finishing the work her thermite splash started. The second explosion gave enough cover for a bouncy-bomb to smack under her chin and burst, flashing her shields again.</p><p>She prepared to spit a real one back, but the ground suddenly rumbled.</p><p>“Below!” Skittle commed.</p><p>An angry toothy pig muzzle thrashed out of the pit. The Head segment skittered for Meteor. She spied an opportunity.</p><p>Head spat two more of its one trick as she dashed for it, but she weaved around one and dodged clear under the other. Her saber cut across its right legs and she shoved it for all her velocity was worth. The leg joints failed and it rolled and rolled to the pit. Stick’s teeth snagged on an uneven part of the spherical segment and cleaved it. Meteor watched the detonation with a little satisfaction. A broken, punctured Stick Hellpig staggered out of the earth, a tribute to its design’s resilience.</p><p>Meteor yawned silently, let a Meteor Melter grenade roll out into her hand, and tossed it up high.</p><p>“Sphynx, two-plus-one down.”</p><p>“Are you certain? I’m still reading Stick as active.”</p><p>The grenade landed, spilling incendiary matter over and into Stick’s injuries. Meteor turned around and let the hellpig’s LIFE cell go off on its own terms.</p><p>“Ah. I stand corrected.”</p><p>The Beetron descended with Skittle lounging over the horn, fingers linked behind their head.</p><p>“Hurtin’?</p><p>Meteor held your neck and stretched. “Not a lot.”</p><p>“Not a little, then.” They flitted to her as the stairs unfolded. “You gotta be more careful.”</p><p>“Says the one who was almost a snack.”</p><p>“<em>You’re</em> almost a snack.”</p><p>“Eh-hem?” Sphynx interrupted. “So terribly sorry for the loose worm, but you do have one target left?”</p><p>Skittle did a passable Sphynx impression. “Hurry hurry, the employees are being unprofitable!”</p><p>Meteor couldn’t help but laugh, scrapes and all, as she hopped aboard. She’d certainly had worse lately.</p><p>#</p><p>The courtesy shuttle took her out along the hills and to a dry river. Up ahead stood exactly what was advertised: a barn. Red walls, white trim, solar roofing. The doors were broken in.</p><p>“Sphynx, land us at the door.”</p><p>“My pleasure. Do you like the barn design? It’s wonderfully quaint, isn’t it?”</p><p>“It’s nice,” said Meteor, honestly. “Very twenty-first century.”</p><p>“Getting a lot of offlined core signals inside, though,” said Skittle.</p><p>“That would be the mechaniloid racks, dear. That particular barn is home to the fliers. Brick made his way in while you were busy and now he’s being, well, a greedy little swine.”</p><p>“So he’ll be more powerful?” Meteor hopped off the beetle.</p><p>“More energetic than the others, perhaps, but his movements should be identical.”</p><p><em>Outstanding</em>.</p><p>Meteor approached the barn doors. As she looked inside, the lights were off, but with the benefit of increasing sunlight she recognized racks and racks of yellow-orange Bomb Beens and purple-gray Batton Bones reaching to and across the ceiling. A wide tunnel had been smashed through a narrow central aisle—</p><p>Brick Hellpig stampeded straight through it—</p><p><em>Nope nope nope</em>—</p><p>Meteor spat a grenade straight up and dashed out. Her timing was perfect. Burning liquid metal anointed the monster mechaniloid’s forehead, making it thrash as it ran. The momentum of swinging that stupidly big head made it veer toward her. Its jaws madly gnashed the air, much too close, as it barreled past her.</p><p>“Skittle! Dazzle me!”</p><p>Skittle idly ticked points on their fingers. “You’re skilled, smart, full of heart—”</p><p>“<em>You know what I mean!</em>”</p><p>Brick plodded to a stop and jerked back around to her, snorting fire.</p><p>“<em>Ohhhh</em>,” they grinned, playing it up.</p><p>Brick charged.</p><p>Meteor shielded her eyes with a forearm.</p><p>Skittle swooped in front of her, trailing overlapping circles in a field of sparkling holoform. They threw out their arms and fed the hellpig a blinding photonic pulse. The shadow of Meteor’s own arm painted a swath of visible light in the shining armageddon.</p><p>Brick charged past her again. She turned her head – and saw a perfect duplicate of herself a couple meters away turning her head. Brick crashed through the corner of the barn, blasting bright electric arcs out and over the barn walls for half a second. Her shimmering holo-decoy expired and the photonic obfuscation hiding her body evaporated.</p><p>“Oh dear,” said Sphynx.</p><p>“Don’t tell me.”</p><p>“There may have been a power surge in—”</p><p>“I said <em>don’t!</em>”</p><p>She didn’t need to. Racks and racks of tiny eyes lit up in the barn.</p><p>“Skittle, buddy?”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“Keep them off me. I’ll send Piggy all the way home.”</p><p>The sun continued its rise as Skittle flitted into the barn. Brick shook off some electrocution jitters and sniffed the air. <em>Cheater</em>.</p><p>From what she’d seen, distance made the Hellpigs charge, mid-range made them breathe fire, and close proximity made them thrash. True to pattern, Brick galloped for her.</p><p>She spat-lobbed a Melter grenade and sped to her right, toward the barn where all the small mechaniloids started to make big noise. Brick took the thermite burst on the eyes and bucked like a bronco under a shield flash, spinning and stomping and kicking until its momentum halted it on the cracked riverbed.</p><p>“Olé,” she grinned.</p><p>Brick’s eyes were obliterated. Its ear twitched at her.</p><p><em>Oops</em>.</p><p>Dust from cracked earth swirled under its hooves as it charged for her and the increasingly noisy barn. Her back was literally to the wall. Situational awareness would lead most people to dodge to one side or another, but she had never ignored the value of surroundings. She performed what the Hunters called a Z-dash: a jolt forward, a high dash-assisted leap back, and a wall kick out, intending to overshoot her foe and spit at it on the trip over.</p><p>The problem was that her standard dash didn’t fire for as long as her old upgraded one.</p><p>She snapped forward, snap up and back, but the boost cut out as she kicked off the barn. Rather than sending her over the hellpig, her old nemesis Gravity arced her right for it.</p><p>She spat raw grenadeless thermite the instant it cycled back to ready, ignited her saber and followed the glob down. The thermite hit. Her saber joined it, heat to heat, cutting deep into Brick’s hide, its shield strength insufficient to repel her. Brick crashed into the wall, throwing her back. Her saber carved a furrow on its way out.</p><p>She landed.</p><p>A cloud of mechaniloid bats swooped at her, buffeting her with collisions and nibbling. She swung her saber blindly, blowing up several.</p><p>A light show of lasers lit up the barn even as Brick extracted itself; Skittle’s ministrations weren’t enough to keep dozens of bats and bugs from swarming into daylight. Batton Bones swooped low. Bomb Beens buzzed high and started dropping their annoying little mines.</p><p>Brick turned around and breathed fire in a back-and-forth arc. The bats avoided the flame; Meteor holstered her saber and stepped into the fire to keep them off, feeding Brick a charged shot. He thrashed again, stomping and kicking and snapping at nothing, trampling Bomb Been mines and damaging his hooves. Meteor gave him space to work out his frustration, fired some easy potshots at his flank – and stepped on a mine herself.</p><p>The shock went up her leg, stunning her dash cycle at a moment when she really wished it didn’t. A wave of bats swooped in; she released her charge shot; it streaked through them all and grazed the giant proto-boar, giving it a bearing toward which to charge with its mouth open. Meteor ran as fast as the ordinary motion of her legs could take her and spat a grenade in its way.</p><p>The shot sank more satisfyingly than the Worm Seeker segment. Brick felt something of non-zero mass land in its mouth and snapped it shut.</p><p>Thermite dripped straight through its jaw and down its neck. Brick fell like a ton of itself and started exploding.</p><p>One persistent bat dived for Meteor and in a fit of pique she simply punched it out of the air. She glanced at the barn as a hot cracking noise grew louder. Drunk-rainbow lasers carved through the roof supports and brought it down on the interior. Skittle soared out ahead of a thousand or more small explosions all popping off at once. A couple of their palm-lasers swept the sky and took down the out-of-the-way Bomb Beens, cancelling any further rain of bombs.</p><p>Meteor held up her fist. Skittle fluttered down and bumped cuffs with her.</p><p>The Beetron ride descended. “Beautiful work, dear!” Sphynx sounded giddy. “A bit scored and pitted, I’d wager, but you came out of it well above expectation!”</p><p>“Right on both counts, ma’am.” At her best, of course, this mission would’ve been more of a stroll, but Meteor was glad to know she was still worth her zenny. She headed for the beetle. “Thank you for your guidance, and thank you for supporting the Maverick Hunters.”</p><p>“Entirely my pleasure.”</p><p>The Jewel Beetron’s thrusters tilted… and turned its bulk not broadside for boarding but pointed directly at Meteor. She stopped short, scuffing the dirt.</p><p>“After all,” said Sphynx, “in no other organization in the world could I find a more worthy opponent.”</p><p>The beetle’s horn spike cracked in the middle and popped up just enough to let four short beam blades ignite. And then spin. All because, evidently, this just wasn’t Meteor’s morning.</p><p>“Dammit,” Skittle sighed.</p><p>Meteor took a step back. “Sphynx, what’s going on?”</p><p>“One can only hunt mechaniloids so many times before it gets dreadfully dull…”</p><p>Skittle rolled their neck. “Yeah, ‘nuffa this.” They dived for the beetle’s head. A scorpion-like stinger lashed out from their wing-mount backpack and jabbed behind the mechaniloid’s left eye. The spinning sabers stuttered and failed, and the lift thrusters powered down without a fuss.</p><p>“Well aren’t <em>you</em> cheeky,” Sphynx griped.</p><p>Meteor covered her earcap. “Corona Sphynx if the next words you say aren’t ‘this is a misunderstanding’ then you and I are going to have a real problem.”</p><p>“That was my intent, dear,” she chuckled. “I <em>want</em> that for us.”</p><p>“Darnit.”</p><p>“You’re lucky your spotter is so resourceful,” she said as Skittle practically burrowed into the Beetron’s head, tiny tools flying in and out of their expert hands. “You might just make it back here in one piece. I <em>ardently</em> hope so, dear. The thought of a seasoned Hunter like you, battle-scarred, busting down my door, volcanic vengeance in your eyes as we begin our dance… worth it, <em>so</em> worth it! <em>Aha-ha ha-ha!</em>”</p><p>Meteor rubbed the ample space between her eyes with the heel of her palm. “This is going to be complicated.”</p><p>“No it’s not.” Skittle extracted themself from the beetle and kicked an access panel back into place. “We hop on my new pet here, I cut through the jamming, and you go retire a Maverick. Bingo bongo.”</p><p>“She’s not my target, Skittle.”</p><p>“Uhhhh yes she goddamn is?”</p><p>“This isn’t a real Maverick incident, this is just some stuck-up one-percenter challenging me to a stupid duel.”</p><p>Skittle slapped her. The impact puffed out a cloud of glitter that briefly made her see in ultraviolet.</p><p>“You have <em>got</em> to quit disbelieving people when they tell you they’re Mavericks! On top of negligent public endangerment, <em>assuming</em> that video she showed us wasn’t doctored, that cat-bitch wants to kill you, <em>you, a Maverick Hunter</em>, which means you’re a thousand percent within rights to put her down! I didn’t bring you back from a millimeter shy of a <em>name plaque</em> for you to be blasé about this!”</p><p>Meteor sullenly rubbed her face. “I didn’t say I wasn’t going to fight her.”</p><p>“You were gonna try a live capture, weren’t you.”</p><p>“Maybe.”</p><p>“Despite being Rank B now. With regs still forbidding it below A.”</p><p>Meteor sagged. “Heck.”</p><p>“Yeah. ‘Heck.’”</p><p>She grabbed her head and bent back as far as her body type allowed. “<em>AaaAAAGH</em> all I wanted was a kiddie pool mission to start with! Just <em>one!</em> Pretty location, outdoors, simple parameters! Simple! I’m supposed to be a B-Rank now, aren’t I?!”</p><p>“You’re you,” Skittle shrugged. “I’ve seen well-prepped C-Ranks retire an A-Class before. Are you telling me the swordbug cut out your experience too?”</p><p>“No,” Meteor dropped her arms and bent forward. “I just hate inefficiency. Losing effectiveness, losing resources, losing time. I do a thing, I want it to stay done.” She set her jaw. “Sphynx is going to stay done.”</p><p>“That’s the spirit!” Sphynx chimed in over comms.</p><p>“Shut up!” Meteor and Skittle snapped.</p><p>“Come on,” Skittle tapped their head, “I’ve got the beetle on a subsidiary remote link.”</p><p>Meteor climbed aboard. The Beetron’s thrusters took the two of them away.</p><p>Which was when she noticed the glittering in the sky.</p><p>“Incidentally, dear,” said Sphynx, “that mechaniloid storage barn? One of several.”</p><p>A cloud of Batton Bones spread between Meteor and the central building several kilometers out. Each of them seemed to be carrying a big bomb in their claws.</p><p>“Skittle, you got a handle on driving?”</p><p>“Two handles.”</p><p>“If you gave up one, could you still cut through the jamming?”</p><p>“I’ll work on it.”</p><p>“Good. Give me a strafing run.”</p><p>The beetle turned. The flock turned with it. Meteor opened fire with basic shots, losing any semblance of accuracy but still hitting enough of the cloud to start low-score chain reactions.</p><p>“Did you know I was a Hunter myself, once?” Started Sphynx’s monologue. “Addis Ababa Ninth. I joined for fun after Sigma went down, but they didn’t appreciate my, aha-ha, lack of deference. It bothered the upper ranks, the way I made the Hunters seem undisciplined, but what in the world could they do to me?”</p><p>“Can you shut her up?” Meteor asked Skittle between shots.</p><p>“If I had three wishes.”</p><p>The bats thinned out and overtook the beetle’s altitude, but the bombs they dropped were big and slow and Skittle’s driving juked them all. Individually they just weren’t fast enough to catch up. The second Jewel Beetron heading for them, however, was.</p><p>“Alas, after Ostrich got away from me, Command found their reason to send me home. Dishonorably,” Sphynx lamented, bothered by the inconvenience of it all. The incoming beetle matched Meteor and Skittle’s, course correction for course correction, spinning its beam blades for a head-on collision even as Meteor fired as fast as she could. It parried every single shot. It was like trying to shoot through a fan.</p><p>A familiar photonic shimmer oil-slicked over Meteor’s eyes. The incoming beetle swung to her left, ramming through a holographic double. The shimmer vanished as Skittle threw the biggest middle finger they could over their shoulder.</p><p>“Oh, but I landed on my feet, aha-ha,” that snooty cat just kept talking. “With humans and reploids alike playing warrior with me, safely distant from an actual war, my private wealth soared. But alas—” Meteor was really starting to hate her sighs of ennui— “after a while it all felt so empty.”</p><p>Another Beetron launched from the roof of the central building, coming up fast. “Skittle, another incoming!”</p><p>“I know!”</p><p>“I filled my lonely days with hunting my own prey stocks, and even some of my fool clients, but there was such little danger…”</p><p>“Skittle you don’t seem to be dodging!”</p><p>“I needed the <em>thrill</em>,” Sphynx purred.</p><p>“Not gonna bother,” Skittle clung to Meteor’s back.</p><p>“The chance to <em>lose</em>, and to lose <em>everything</em>…”</p><p>“Jump!”</p><p>She did. The beetles crashed and exploded above Meteor as she fell to the salt flat. She could hear Skittle’s wings working overtime until she splashed down hard.</p><p>“Dancing on the edge of death and landing on-point was the one joyous feeling I hadn’t yet wrung from this wretched world,” Sphynx kept going.</p><p>Skittle let go. “Shut your sewer, Maverick.”</p><p>A high-velocity solid bullet cracked blue sparks off their instantly-strobing shields. A distortion shimmer enrobed them and they vanished from sight.</p><p> A hundred meters away, Corona Sphynx rose from behind the edge of an empty helipad.</p><p>“Come, Meteor Showa!” She shouted aloud and over comms, causing an odd echo in Meteor’s mind. In the morning light she saw a long rifle barrel on Sphynx’s right arm. Beetron #2 descended to hover at its mistress’s side.</p><p>“Come and DANCE with your queen!”</p><p>{Tag?} Skittle text-commed.</p><p>{Beetle,} Meteor replied instantly.</p><p>{When?}</p><p>{Moves.}</p><p>{Copy.}</p><p>{HQ?}</p><p>{Working.}</p><p>Meteor trusted that Skittle could stay hidden. She, on the other hand, couldn’t possibly be any more caught out.</p><p>She sloshed through the water at a pace best described as moseying, letting her arms swing loose. A bullet grazed her elbow – a precision graze, meant to startle or halt. She did neither, and kept on walking.</p><p>“That’s rather the opposite of dancing!” Sphynx taunted.</p><p>Meteor knew how fast Skittle culd fly. They were completely out of her senses, but they still had space to cover. She silently counted the seconds.</p><p>Meteor taunted back, “And you’re rather the opposite of a queen.”</p><p>She dashed the instant her last syllable landed, which was the same instant Sphynx fired. Meteor shot three plasma rounds before Sphynx cracked out another HV bullet – <em>generated ammo?</em> – that grazed the crest of her back. She ran, charged her buster, waited a few ticks and ducked another shot – <em>oh yeah, gotta be generated</em> – before returning fire.</p><p>The Beetron jerked into the path of the streaking green shot and spun up its blade-fan to protect Sphynx. Keeping her dash in reserve, Meteor used the cover to run for the helipad. The mechaniloid shredded the shot and rocketed at her, completely blocking Sphynx’s line of sight.</p><p>Three Scatter Seelies sublimated out of the air in different positions and made the beetle taste the rainbow. Six bright beams buffeted the mechaniloid, but by the angle of one piercing the beetle’s head clean through the eyes, the genuine article was on the right. Meteor dashed ahead but bore left, dodging the exploding hulk and snapping a pair of shots toward Sphynx, careful not to hit one of the false Skittles in order to draw her attention their way.</p><p>Sphynx’s left hand retreated into her forearm armor. A flaming sphere instantly burned to life around her and Meteor’s shots disappeared into its corona. The cat pointed her arm at the genuine Skittle and the entire orb launched off her body. The air shimmered, but not from stealth tech, as it roared over the moth.</p><p>They cried out, zipping evasive maneuvers and vanishing from sight, their rapid-strobing shield flash betraying their position and direction.</p><p>Sphynx’s ears tracked where the flashing flew.</p><p>Meteor was two seconds away. She needed Sphynx’s attention.</p><p>She vaulted onto the helipad and landed dashing, her green-comet charged shot leading the way. Sphynx clicked her flame aura back on, but the shot made it through – and so did Meteor, her left hand full of saber, scoring a cut across Sphynx’s midsection. Her attentive shields blunted a deeper strike.</p><p>Meteor had her attention.</p><p>Her fireball corona stayed centered on her as she wheeled a kick into Meteor’s armpit. The force was impressive, but she caught herself on her outside foot and spat a glob of molten aluminum her way. It stuck to Sphynx through the shield-flash as she raised her buster. Meteor’s own buster met hers and they both fired at once, the collision kickback forcing open valuable space. Sphynx capitalized on it, bringing up her rifle arm and hopping back as she fired. The shot set off Meteor’s shields and the recoil set Sphynx down two meters away. She leveled her buster and washed Meteor in the bubble of flame.</p><p>Meteor’s saber blade visibly wobbled as the orb passed over her and snuffed out some distance behind. Her sensors protested at the temperature, a rare thing indeed. Sphynx wasn’t throwing mere hellpig fire.</p><p>
  <em>How short is its cooldown?</em>
</p><p>Meteor led with her saber, but Sphynx backpedal-hopped out of the blade’s reach to the corner of the helipad. Smiling.</p><p>
  <em>Is.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Is she using the pad as a fighting ring?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>This really is just life-affirming amusement to her, isn’t it?</em>
</p><p>Meteor dashed. Sphynx side-jumped to follow the edge, but Meteor didn’t oblige her, instead shooting right off the platform and throwing a charged shot down the perimeter. Sphynx took it on the rifle arm with a surprised growl.</p><p>Meteor expected her to keep range, but instead her rifle retracted, her fire aura re-ignited, and she dived for Meteor with the slight advantage of height.</p><p>She landed clawing the fish about the face and neck, knocking her down and engulfing her in proximity flame. Meteor sprayed thermite directly onto Sphynx’s armor, but once again it didn’t eat through like it should have. She hammered her saber into the cat’s side, but the blade bit shallowly – something in the orb itself mitigated any damage. Which meant that only hits of a certain strength could work…</p><p>Meteor wedged her shield-flashing feet under her attacker and fired a dash.</p><p>Meteor’s back carved a short groove in the earth. Sphynx went flying and slammed against the edge of the helipad hard enough to flash.</p><p>{Nice,} Skittle quick-texted.</p><p>{Stay,} replied Meteor as fast as she could think the word.</p><p>{Copy.}</p><p>{HQ?}</p><p>{Bustr.}</p><p>“What?” She asked aloud, getting up.</p><p>A high-velocity round struck her hip just above her left leg. Her shields were slower than Skittle’s on the order of microseconds, but it was enough of a window for the bullet to perforate her. Her shields flashed too late to stop it. All-too-recent memories of blinding-fast blades having the same effect flashed through her mind just as quickly.</p><p>Sphynx followed with a strut-step forward and a point of her buster. Meteor slammed her tail as hard as she could to propel her rolling out of its way. The soil baked and steamed in the orb’s passing.</p><p>With no flame-shield up to mitigate and no big hit at the ready, Sphynx tried to circle around her target. Meteor jerked her head with her mouth open ahead of where Sphynx moved; she ate the bluff and hopped back right into Meteor’s charged buster shot. The shot’s electromagnetic and thermal shear bit into her side before her shields bit off the bulk of the damage.</p><p>“Ha-hah, AH-haha!” The cat reveled, summoning her fireball again. “You <em>wicked</em> thing!”</p><p>Her rifle arm swung up as Meteor got back on her feet, but she was ready for it. She dashed to her injured side which, yes, made her hip sting like heck, but it meant the shot destroyed one of her decorative fins instead of a limb. Sphynx seemed to expecting her to <em>avoid</em> getting hurt – but by that point in her life she know how to balance risk versus reward. She knew how to trade one blow for two.</p><p>The HV shot was on its cooldown. The orb came right on cue.</p><p>Meteor jumped through it.</p><p>She accepted the internal warning sirens of the corona bubble’s heat spike for the priceless look on Sphynx’s well-crafted face.</p><p>Her left-hand saber met Sphynx’s right-hand gun barrel and kept going along her arm and across her chest. Meteor’s follow-up thermite spit slicked over a rapid blink of Sphynx’s shields before sticking in place and making the cat yowl in pain. Her flash quit flashing. The surplus energy that fed the skin-tight defense field had run dry.</p><p>Meteor punched her in the collar, toppling her into an unfairly graceful splay on the ground. No shields came to her rescue; all she had left was her body. Her armor smoked, dented and scored and partially melted by the fight.</p><p>Even then, Sphynx laughed. It was a laugh of spent effort and satisfied joy. She slotted her hands out of her weapon arms, the rifle snap-retracting like a telescope, and crossed her legs at the ankle right there on the ground.</p><p>“Well now I’ve gone and done it, haven’t I?”</p><p>Meteor watched her for any offensive twitch.</p><p>”Deftly done, my dear, deftly done. I yield.”</p><p>“… You what.”</p><p>“I don’t believe I stuttered. I surrender.” She twitched an ear. “There, the jamming is down. Now call home and take me in so I can buy a few crates of tickets for the Maverick Hunter Charity Ball and enjoy the memories of this hunt.”</p><p>Meteor kept her saber lit.</p><p>“I’m afraid I can’t, ma’am.”</p><p>Sphynx’s smile froze, brittle as ice.</p><p>“You can’t be <em>serious</em>, darling. Do you have any idea who I am? I probably paid for your bedroom!”</p><p>“That may be.” Meteor’s deeper wounds intermittently crackled with little arcs of energy. “The thing is, B-Ranks aren’t cleared for live capture. And I think the jamming is redundant at this point.”</p><p>Skittle gently shimmered out of optic camo behind Meteor. “Oh, <em>fabulously</em> so. You were way too busy to notice, <em>daaaahling</em>, but I was ripping that signal weave the whole fight.”</p><p>“What’d you send out?” Meteor asked, with both eyes on Sphynx.</p><p>She had a great ear for voices. Skittle’s merriment hit a precipitous slide into wicked vengeance somewhere around the comma.</p><p>“Well, Bustr’s video-hosting service has some great editing options, but I was in a hurry so I just stuck a few sparkles into the background of the recording I made of your rock-humpingly stupid monologue confession when I flooded Command’s inbox with auto-play mosaic link samples.”</p><p>Sphynx’s smile showed less and less satisfaction and more and more teeth.</p><p>“Which are <em>still</em> playing,” Skittle continued. “Because I’ve been streaming the whole fight. Even now. Live.”</p><p>“What was that she said about hunting her fool clients?” Meteor asked no one in particular.</p><p>Sphynx’s eyes darted. Her ears twitched.</p><p>“Halcyon.”</p><p>Skittle perched on Meteor’s upper back, shaded their eyes and scanned the horizon. “Oh, he’s here, is he? And me without my Sunday finest!”</p><p>Sphynx looked straight at them. “Maverick Hunter Commander Halcyon has patronized my establishment in the company of the following—”</p><p>She perked her ears. The panic melted from her features.</p><p>A new comm pinged in Meteor’s ear.</p><p>“Lieutenant Meteor Showa.”</p><p>She didn’t dare blink. All it took was three words from the new voice for her to know she was in over her head. She easily picked out the stress and warning over the aura of golf and smoky rooms.</p><p>“Commander Halcyon.”</p><p>“There has been a misunderstanding, Lieutenant. Your mission is complete. Return to your headquarters. That is all.”</p><p>The comm line cut out.</p><p>Meteor’s lips parted. Skittle looked positively gobsmacked.</p><p>Sphynx rocked her head back and forth behind a winning smile and reclined on the dirt without a care in the world, despite her sparking injuries and the motion-stutter of her arms.</p><p>“Ta-ta, dears. Do visit the gift shop, won’t you?”</p><p>Meteor glared at her, but what in the world could she do? Sphynx was one good solid hit from destruction. She could end her right there…</p><p>
  <em>But darn it, I’m trying to work back up, not down.</em>
</p><p>Sphynx was no longer a threat. Meteor’s job was fundamentally to <em>help</em>. Retiring a surrendered socialite would help no one, least of all herself.</p><p>She extinguished her saber. Skittle flopped over her back. That was that.</p><p>“What a bloody waste.”</p><p>“Don’t say that,” Meteor shrugged them into her arms and carried them limply face-down. “Nobody had to die today. That’s a win.”</p><p>“You’re letting a Maverick off. <em>We’re</em> letting a Maverick off. What’s this world become.”</p><p>“Better. One centimeter at a time.”</p><p>Meteor headed inside. Every clerk at every shop gave her a standing ovation. She blinked.</p><p>“Congratulations!”</p><p>“Almost had her!”</p><p>“That’s the boss for you!”</p><p>“Nice dash-kick!”</p><p>“Ooh, ooh, can you sign my saber hilt? Please?”</p><p>“Take me home and drop me on the floor somewhere,” Skittle mumbled.</p><p>Meteor sighed and headed back up to the teleport pad, a centimeter closer to better.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:</p><p>“Bustr”</p><p>Reploids were quick to adopt social media as a primary mode of expression once they entered the sapient condition. Indeed, reploids are credited with 22nd-century social media’s shift away from serialized literature, curative journalism, and user-produced original reporting, returning it (for better or worse) to a state akin to that of the early-to-mid 21st century.</p><p>The most popular social media platform for reploid users is Bustr, in reference to the common electromagnetic-containment plasma weapon. Reploid-exclusive platforms such as LIFEspace and Rossum were shut down worldwide in the wake of General’s declaration of independence, essentially leaving the human-friendly Bustr the last man standing. Users enjoy the platform’s versatility and idiosyncratic vernacular as well as the rare rule forbidding corporate entities from owning or making accounts.</p><p>A user “shoots” their submissions to their Bustr account, “charges” other users’ shots that they like, “chambers” those they wish to archive, and “reshoots” other users’ shots if they wish to share the content with those users who are “aiming” their account.</p><p>Some of the most-aimed Bustr accounts include specific Maverick Hunters, up to and including X, who primarily uses the platform to reshoot nature photography and Maverick Hunter public relations news.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Best Not To Ask</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meteor returns from her mission, recovers, and -- true to form -- does a quick turnaround to her next one.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Veracruz 4<sup>th</sup>’s mission-return teleporter rooms were off the big donut on the surgery floor of the repair building. Meteor arrived on one of six pads with Skittle flopped over her shoulder and found herself looking right into Minefield Turtle’s thick arms. The unit commander drummed her fingers on her forearm plating.</p><p>“Lieutenant, I’ll debrief you later. Promptly get yourself repaired, but leave our repair technician with me. I need to have Words with them.”</p><p><em>Uh-oh</em>. Meteor heard that capital letter.</p><p>“Whatever,” Skittle moped. “Worthless words wilting will, warriors with wispy wants…”</p><p>She set them on the floor.</p><p>“I hate you,” they mumbled into the floor panels. “Actively. I am <em>in hate</em> with you.”</p><p>“See you, Skittle.” She straightened up and tapped a salute to Turtle. “Ma’am.”</p><p>Meteor walked out with a limp. She’d had worse.</p><p>One of the Lifesavers waited outside the sliding door and escorted her to a slab in a small room. Just a week ago she would’ve been in a queue. She wondered how much of that was a shift in workload and how much was Skittle’s influence.</p><p>“Bee-Twelve, right?” Meteor addressed her attending Lifesaver, recognizable by the lack of tabs on his beard-plate.</p><p>“Yes ma’am.”</p><p>“You catch the stream?”</p><p>The doctor busily removed some of Meteor’s outer armor. “Yes ma’am. The floor chief set it on the commons display. It cut out when she mentioned Halcyon’s name.”</p><p>
  <em>… Huh.</em>
</p><p>“Right then? No farther?”</p><p>“Yes ma’am.” B-12 rolled their wrists and their hands separated into nightmare spiders of miniature tools. They insinuated into her entry wounds and made her feel the reploid equivalent of itchy.</p><p>“Didn’t that strike you as—”</p><p>“—I find it best not to ask when it comes to Halcyon, Lieutenant. Especially in a politically charged atmosphere.”</p><p>“Duly noted.” She studied the calming lights of the ceiling. “Hey, do you have a callsign?”</p><p>“No ma’am.” He withdrew a few tool-fingers and closed the holes with flash-printed titanium-X. “Scatter Seelie tends to call me Vitamin, but I understand they do that with every Lifesaver of appropriate designation.”</p><p>“Mind if I call you that too?”</p><p>“No ma’am,” said Vitamin.</p><p>A name was all she needed to open her chatterbox. “Well, Vitamin, if you want politics I’m your girl. What’s your leaning? People find out where I was built and make assumptions, but I’m really more of a…”</p><p>Vitamin kept to his work and let her talk and talk, only making positive affirmation noises and harmless nods at certain points. She loved doctors like that. She didn’t hate waiting, she didn’t hate repairs, and she didn’t even hate silence, but something about lying flat and having someone tinker in her insides made her want to yammer on, even one-sidedly.</p><p>“… and even <em>then</em>, his supporters <em>still</em> wouldn’t wear masks. It was crazy.”</p><p>“Your repairs are done, Lieutenant.”</p><p>“Aw, already?”</p><p>“I promise. Your somatic regulator was below a quarter of optimal, however, so your recharge is incomplete.”</p><p>“I’ll get a nap in after my debrief,” she scooted off the slab. “Thanks, Vitamin.”</p><p>“We’re here to serve, ma’am.”</p><p>Meteor paused at the door. A cup of black cylinders each the length of a water bottle and the thickness of a human thumb stood on a little shelf above a terminal.</p><p>“How much for a pad?”</p><p>Confusion crossed Vitamin’s face. “Do you not have a personal HUD partition? I can do an install if you like.”</p><p>“I do, but I just like a manual interface sometimes. That’s me, the fusion-powered luddite,” she half-grinned.</p><p>“As you like, ma’am. Those are surplus models we’ve formatted for resale. Please, take one.”</p><p>“Thanks.”</p><p>Meteor took a cylinder on her way out. It had a hard square tab sticking out of the middle. She pinched it there and gave it a sharp shake, unrolling the rectangular screen of the datapad with a stiff snap. The screen was pristine; Lifesavers took good care of their equipment, even ten-zenny tools like that one. The first-boot program spun an icon of a globe for a second before prompting a user entry. Fortunately Meteor kept a local backup of all her settings, so with a couple of taps she selected “User Sync.”</p><p>Instantly the screen swam with perky anime fish orbiting application icons. <em>That</em> was what Internet access in an expanded tab of perception inside one’s mind lacked: the ancient and subtle art of the desktop.</p><p>She boarded the elevator, tapped an icon of a lemon and cued up the reploid world’s biggest social media platform.</p><p>Meteor’s main Bustr account shot various special interests to those who aimed it: unusual historical facts, unusual historical maps, pictures of underwater ruins, videos of past-century robot cartoons, occasional Maverick Hunter memes, and international politics. Her secondary Bustr was a Japanese-language fan account for Terry Pratchett's <em>Discworld</em> novels and all their animated film and television adaptations. It never ceased to amaze her how the latter had six times the follower count of the former.</p><p>Bustr’s active user numbers gradually rose now that her time zone was waking up. “Halcyon” and “#SkittleSunday” seemed to be trending on her main feed. She scrolled chronologically until she found the source. Skittle’s user icon was a pile of rainbow-colored candy.</p><p>Meteor exited to one of the four gracefully arching skybridges that intersected at an observation deck above the Courtyard. She braced herself and played Skittle’s latest video.</p><p>It started with her strafing the cloud of bomber bats. A sparkly corner label read “Pre-Recorded.”</p><p>“Did you know I was a Hunter myself, once?” Sphynx began. Meteor ticked forward.</p><p>“—the opposite of a queen,” she herself said, far below the camera. The corner read “Live!!!,” though the video itself wasn’t by that point. A fast-scrolling chat bar appeared by the dated declaration; user icons were circular for humans and square for reploids.</p><p>The battle played out. Sphynx’s fireball shield engulfed the camera and Skittle’s panicked alert came through realer than real life. Little icons of candles and campfires and moths flooded the chat, mostly from square-icon users.</p><p>More dialogue played out as Meteor reached the deck. It was a popular hangout spot for the off-duty who didn’t want to idle in their rooms. A few mass-production reploids in the seats around the rim seemed to be watching the same video, either on datapads or with their gazes tuned to the middle distance.</p><p>“Halcyon,” said Sphynx on the recording.</p><p>The camera rose and panned over the horizon. Skittle replied, “Oh, he’s here, is—” and cut out to a [SIGNAL LOST] error. The chat flooded with a torrent of capital letters and rows of astonished-face emotes before the video ended a second later. The comments on the post itself were similarly amazed. They were interspersed with memetic Repliforce insignias, screenshots of enthusiastic cartoon pirates, and short animated clips of children’s television programs featuring the letter R.</p><p>
  <em>Well then.</em>
</p><p>“Look, that’s her!”</p><p>The slackers and morning wanderers on the observation deck turned to her. Some applauded, some merely smiled. She smiled back.</p><p>“So what HAPPENED?” One led, triggering the others to burst with questions – “You got her right,” “How hot’s that special,” “Did Halcyon show up,” “Did he tell you to off her,” too many at once.</p><p>She smothered their fire with a blanket statement. “Classified, sorry.” The questioners groaned and sighed and shook their heads.</p><p>“You know Skittle well?” A white-armored one – a Howlite, a flight model – asked.</p><p>“A bit too well, really. We were part of the Geneva Fourth during Doppler and got shuffled around for years afterward, but they always kept in touch.”</p><p>“Can you tell them to aim me back? I’m username Butterfly-dash-Net-three-seventy, I reshoot all their shots!”</p><p>“I’ll put a word in.”</p><p>“And tell them to post more selfies!” He grinned.</p><p>“I’ll try.”</p><p>“And tell them to have their wings in all the shots,” his eyes glazed over and his smile gained some rictus.</p><p>“I’ll… definitely talk to them!” <em>About anything else.</em></p><p>The trip across another of the deck’s skybridge spokes let her see traffic crossing the Courtyard and disappearing into underground ramps or archway tunnels at ground level. The Veracruz 4<sup>th</sup>’s enlisted (“contracted”) soldiers walked the edges on their way to duties. One tended to the plants around a sitting area at the foot of the barracks building across the way. Meteor passed a couple others loitering on the bridge, people-watching and taking in the view for its own sake.</p><p> <em>Everybody’s got their own morning.</em></p><p>#</p><p>Minefield Turtle filled the backless seat of office and then some. The in-wall screen before her, at the tip of the oval room, was divided and sub-divided into maps and live feeds of the unit’s operations – along with one instance of the familiar Bustr UI.</p><p>“All fixed up,” Meteor announced as she stepped in. “Ready for debrief, ma’am.”</p><p>Turtle kept her back to Meteor, her eyes fixed on the various feeds.</p><p>“Commander?”</p><p>“Please begin, Lieutenant. I’m recording.”</p><p>Meteor straightened up.</p><p>“Corona Sphynx met Skittle and I at the pad and gave us a summary which included schematics of my targets. She seemed unbothered by the illegality of the pigs’ matter-reclamation tech and freely noted that she was blocking law-enforcement signals as well as our own.”</p><p>“Mountains of funding leave safe valleys.”</p><p>“Yes ma’am. After setting out, I engaged the first pig in a…”</p><p>She went on, recounting the safari. She was a stickler for detail, especially in a situation where 5<sup>th</sup> Communications didn’t have eyes and ears on her to log the minutiae.</p><p>“… Whereupon Skittle, as it has become clear, started recording.”</p><p>“Yes, and I’ve bottled that fairy, though the proverbial genie is well and truly out. Skip ahead, Lieutenant. What happened after the recording?”</p><p>“Sphynx seemed to be revealing blackmail. She mentioned that Halcyon had ‘patronized my establishment in the company of the following.’ Unclear who, ma’am. She herself stopped short when she seemed to receive a private comm.”</p><p>Turtle’s seat finally turned around. “And?”</p><p>“And then Commander Halcyon contacted me. His stated opinion was that a misunderstanding had been made, and he summarily declared my mission complete.”</p><p>“Did he.”</p><p>“Yes ma’am. I then left Sphynx where she… reclined, took Skittle past the merchandise stalls and returned.”</p><p>“Did you.”</p><p>Meteor tilted her head, put off by Turtle talking like a wall. “I know the Combat Analysis team can’t be done already, ma’am, but did any of that contradict their findings?”</p><p>“No, Lieutenant.” She tapped an armrest and a tiny red LED blipped out. “They found Corona Sphynx’s remains scattered on the ground by that salt flat.”</p><p>
  <em>Oh heck.</em>
</p><p>“Initial autopsy scans indicated traumatic core failure, high-probability cause being plasma shear in an open chest wound. Did you do it?”</p><p>“No, Commander.”</p><p>“Did your supporting officer do it?”</p><p>“No, Commander.”</p><p>“How many clerks were at work in the lobby?”</p><p>“Eight, Commander.”</p><p>“Deco’s team counted seven. And the pad log on-site showed an additional exit use after you returned.”</p><p>It was amazing how Meteor could get a sinking feeling in her stomach without having one.</p><p>“Where to?”</p><p>“Geneva.”</p><p>Two and two shook hands and made four. The silence between Meteor and Turtle rang with the right answer, but neither of them said it.</p><p>“Will Commander Halcyon be making a statement, ma’am?”</p><p>“No, Lieutenant. I find it best not to speculate on his actions, especially not in a politically charged environment. Agreed?”</p><p>
  <em>One centimeter at a time…</em>
</p><p>“Yes ma’am.”</p><p>Minefield Turtle stood out of the chair rather than riding its rail to the center of the room. “I’m glad to hear that, Meteor, for a given value of glad. I’m sure Nouveau would love to apologize to you in person for a rare misreading of parameters, but he’s afield near Rio. On cleanup.”</p><p><em>Ouch</em>. “Have conditions improved there, much?”</p><p>“Scarcely. I returned from a forty-hour not long before you came back to us. Between the scrap and the scavengers and the opportunistic Mavericks it’s like the Day of Sigma all over again.”</p><p>Meteor closed her eyes. Sky Lagoon’s final death toll was well into seven figures, and the ruin that was Rio de Janeiro wouldn’t stop needing help just because the war was over. Nouveau might have rankled her sometimes, but giving himself a mission out there showed he was committed.</p><p>“At any rate,” Turtle continued, forcing her mood higher, “all that remains now is your payment. The dispensation came straight from the top with astonishing speed. I sent it when I stopped recording. Check your account, I think you’ll be pleased.”</p><p>She did.</p><p>#</p><p>MISSION</p><p>C O M P L E T E</p><p> </p><p>- B-Rank Mission Parameters Complete: 25k</p><p>- Target of Opportunity (Maverick, High-Value): 50k</p><p>- Intel Acquisition: 10k</p><p>- Outstanding Defense of Public Asset: 10k</p><p>TOTAL: 95,000z</p><p>#</p><p>… <em>They’re crediting me with the retirement as a cover-up</em>.</p><p>Meteor was never sure about the “high-value” multiplier – in her experience it was semi-arbitrary – but she was certain that they dumped a boatload of zenny on her to seal her lips.</p><p>Not a day back and she was already mixed up in something unpleasant. Killing Mavericks is one thing; it was clean, it was honest, it was an act of erasing bad to make space for good. But this? She wondered whether the “Public Asset” was the safari park or Halcyon himself.</p><p>… Then again, she was broke just a minute ago. The payout really did make the corruption go down easy. <em>Ugh</em>.</p><p>“Don’t feel sour about taking it,” Turtle advised, apparently reading her mind. “The alternative is not taking it, and then lacking the power to do the most good.”</p><p>“True enough.” And the best place to spend it was… “Where’s Skittle?”</p><p>The aura of command briefly melted off the Commander and Meteor spied a hint of her old Team Mom friend underneath. “Oh, I gave them a light verbal drubbing and sent them sulking back to their room, though I expect they took the scenic route. And I locked their Bustr account until they make an apology video and submit to a codelocked Internet feed when afield.”</p><p>Meteor shook her head and hummed disapprovingly. “You’re a cruel, cruel taskmaster, Minefield Turtle.”</p><p>“I could order them to apologize in formal wear if you like.”</p><p>“What, you want to make me an accessory to a war crime now?”</p><p>“No, Lieutenant,” she chuckled, “I want you to go do anything but another mission until fourteen-hundred at the earliest. That’s an order.”</p><p>“Yes ma’am,” Meteor sounded off with a salute.</p><p>#</p><p>There was only one place Scatter Seelie could be found when they were feeling low.</p><p>Meteor headed to the transport building, then went downstairs and deeper still.</p><p>The low-lit bar, the Eighth Hour, hummed gently as she walked in. Its proximity to a truck ramp lended to its atmosphere; even the seismic dampening architecture couldn’t mute the occasional rumble. Wall panels and fixtures had a tiered-rectangle motif that became more obviously Aztec when one noticed the mandalas on the backs of the chairs. It was cozy, and almost completely empty so early in the morning.</p><p>The sole patron occupied the bar. In a booster seat. They downed a highball with ice in it.</p><p>“Hey Skittle.”</p><p>“Jezebel.”</p><p>“Are you drunk already?”</p><p>“Not enough. The infusions are under quantum-lock so I just added what I had on me. What wasn’t burned off, anyway.”</p><p>“You keep infusions on you?”</p><p>“Humans carry flasks, don’t they?”</p><p>Meteor glanced around for the absent bartender.</p><p>“Let myself in,” Skittle explained. “I’m an officer, am I not?”</p><p>“It’s not really an officer’s bar. It’s got hours. More than eight, despite the name, but there’s a story there…”</p><p>They pitched the glass over their shoulder. “Not interested.” Glass and ice tinkled on the floor.</p><p>“Skittle, this is the opposite of where you should be at this time of day. Come walk with me, get some sun.”</p><p>“You let a Maverick go. You walked away. <em>You</em>. Remember when you used to be a tank? Saw somebody die close enough you felt their blast, and you swore—”</p><p>“She’s dead, Skittle. Corona Sphynx has been retired.”</p><p>Skittle blinked.</p><p>“Halcyon. Some spook finished her and I got the credit.”</p><p>They stared. They slapped their forehead and tilted back laughing for ten seconds.</p><p>“Whew. Universe really has a sense of humor, it does! Hoooo wow. And you took the pay?”</p><p>“Well I kinda had to, but yes.”</p><p>They popped a clap and flitted out of their seat. “Now <em>that</em> almost makes up for your turn of stupid.”</p><p>“Leave it there, Scatter Seelie. You want stupid, try broadcasting a first-person Hunter op to the general public! <em>Oh wait</em>.”</p><p>They made a yappy hand gesture. “Yeah yeah yeah, I got an earful from Lady Fancyshell already. And Proteus slagged my next quarter’s research fund. So don’t think I’m not hurting from it. Or from you.”</p><p>Meteor glanced at a chair. “I really don’t want to get into this here, Skittle. This is… <em>was</em>, Jaguar’s place, and he liked to keep it fun. You want to gripe, do it over upgrades.”</p><p>“<em>Up</em>grades, you say?” Skittle’s sparkling wings took on new energy and they gleefully rubbed their hands together, their grouchiness gone in an instant.</p><p>“Yeah, I have a few ideas—”</p><p>“—No, what you have is <em>items</em>. Things any idiot could staple on your chassis. <em>Ideas</em> are for creators like yours truly. C’mon, let’s bounce.”</p><p>Meteor headed back to the medbay with the moth fairy, chatting all the way. Getting her friend’s mind out of the darkness was a bonus.</p><p>#</p><p>POTENTIAL UPGRADES FOR LAVA-SPITTING FISH ONLY (by S.)</p><p>&gt; VWES Options:</p><p>Gotta fill it out somehow, yeah? We’re good to go with using her DNA – plucked, cleaned, uploaded. The fellas in forensics almost work faster than I do, but this sample’s so high-quality it’s crazy. So pick your favorite.</p><p>“Corona Orb” – Spherical, wide-diameter, high-temperature energy shield. It nullifies weak weapons fire and deals contact damage until fired – and <em>when</em> fired, burns hotter. Trust me on this. Con: slow rate of fire and can’t be used in tandem with buster fire. Pro: super-compatible with your thermal systems, so the emulation’s basically lossless. 12 shots to empty and up to a 32 second hold on each.</p><p>“Hot Nail” – Her rifle. Solid ammo that shoots so fast it’ll hit through most shields and puncture what’s under. Generates a lot of heat, but hey, so do you. 32 shots.</p><p>&gt; DNA Adaptation:</p><p>Then again, you’ve got <em>me</em> as your engineer. I can adapt recovered DNA to you in other ways, but you know the regs – you still only get one bite at that apple unless you <em>really</em> save up.</p><p>“Prominence” – A charge setting on your Meteor Melter. Multiplies the volume and tightens the cohesion so you can spit a big stream to <em>really</em> punish armor.</p><p>“Volcano” – Same as above, but the stream’s an area splash. Got a lot of little guys or a problem with a real dodgy brat? Not anymore!</p><p>&gt; General Whatsits (always an option)</p><p>Oh, lots. Could uptune your Melter to cycle faster, give its grenade setting a little rocket boost, get you sabers, busters, mods for either, just <em>lots</em> of toys. And/or the frame mods we talked about, but those’ll cost you. Talk to me.</p><p>#</p><p>Meteor mulled over her options to the keening sound of lasers and the clanks of metal.</p><p>Her habit of conserving zenny – the very same habit that gave you the larder consumed by your week-ago thrashing – reared its head, but she swiftly stomped it.</p><p>“Skittle, I’m dumping my whole payday on this.”</p><p>Skittle spoke up over their dismantling inside the quarantine cell. “That’s the way! Spend it before Hal changes his mind.”</p><p>“I’ll take the Prominence and a faster Melter cycle. I want that grenade rocket too, but not at the expense of my other big wants. Maybe next time.”</p><p>“Check and check. Next?”</p><p>“Up my buster charge, then turn your cheapo saber gift into a real boy and…” She paused. “No, wait, what am I saying? I’ll just keep this one and buy a full-length high-phase off Windsor, that’ll be more efficient.”</p><p>“Hey now, no patient of mine’s gonna take stock junk off a peddler rack. I’ll build you one here, won’t take but a jiffy.”</p><p>“Windsor’s the quartermaster, Skittle, distributing gear is literally his job.”</p><p>The beam sounds ceased. “Meteor, my piscean pal, I <em>need</em> stuff to do. If I had toes I’d be using them to solve Rubix dodecahedrons right now, I would.”</p><p>“No you wouldn’t.”</p><p>“I totally would.” Skittle flitted out with armful of wall panels. They had nearly denuded the quarantine cell’s interior. “I’ll build you a nice hi-beam at stock cost. So that’s forty-five grand, like. What’s the other fifty?”</p><p>Meteor hesitated. Her old mass was comforting; it let her feel the role she played as a dash-tank. But then she recalled the giant spinning blades, and how little her mass mattered when her limbs started dropping…</p><p>“Flex. Gimme flex architecture.”</p><p>“Nice call. You can always dip in the armor or shields bucket later. Whatever mix you like. S’your body.”</p><p>“I look forward to it. When can you get started?”</p><p>Skittle lifted their goggles off. “In here, like? Not before your next mish, that’s for sure. I can shoo one of the Lifesavers out of a room and get to work right now if you want.”</p><p>“And they call <em>me</em> a hard worker.”</p><p>“You are! But that’s ‘cause for you it’s actual work. This?” They gestured at the cell. “This is the sound of me living and breathing, it is. Keeps the edge off, keeps me from thinking too long and hard about shit what makes me cross. Y’know.”</p><p>She did notice their dialect came back stronger when they were happier. It was just a shame they had such a hard time getting there without being in a state of productive focus.</p><p>Working her way back to top strength was a way of helping them, too, Meteor realized.</p><p>“Then let’s go shoo a Lifesaver.”</p><p>“Attagirl.”</p><p>The upgrades and installs took a few hours. Flex architecture mostly involved the joints, which required dismounting and remounting nearly all of Meteor’s outer armor, piece by piece. She was fully conscious for the process, the better to chat with her engineer about all she’d missed at the end of the war.</p><p>“I still can’t believe we lost Final Weapon,” Meteor frowned. “All that time and expense and we never even fired it.”</p><p>“That’s politics for you. By the time the U.N. got its act together, Peacock gave the aiming algorithm a randomized drift. I <em>told</em> them I could narrow the wobble to a hundred kliks of center and turn the yield into saturation bombardment, just daisycutter the whole radius, but <em>ooh, no,</em> that’d be <em>irresponsible</em>…”</p><p>Meteor came out the other end with a range of movement she didn’t know she wanted that much until she had it, and a nice new beam saber to boot. She added it to her hip. The hilt was bigger and decidedly less glittery than the short one, to store much deadlier power but with far fewer total seconds of use – unless one had an expensive charger tap on their body. Which she didn’t, anymore. The tradeoff was still worth it. Few enemies expected any kind of beam sabering from a big and hunched body type like hers.</p><p>She smirked inwardly at the long and short hilts, the high-phase and low-phase sabers. <em>More Edo than Showa,</em> she privately punned<em>.</em></p><p>Skittle clacked a scanner tool into place on a shelf and paused.</p><p>“You ever wonder where we’d be without war? What we’d’ve done with ourselves?”</p><p>“Oh, sure,” Meteor tested her reflexes by tapping her thumb to her fingertips in different sequences as fast as she could. “Me, probably a professor by now. You, though? You’d be right where you are now. Maybe with less swearing.”</p><p>“Ain’t that the bloody truth. Guess I’d better make the most of it, like.” Skittle flitted out the door. “I’mma go find a bed nobody’s using and dismantle it for parts. You?”</p><p>“I’ve got my own bed, thanks.”</p><p>“Is it fishbowl? ‘Cause I can make it a fishbowl.”</p><p>“It’s not a fishbowl.”</p><p>“Grill?”</p><p>“Take care, Skittle.”</p><p>#</p><p>The barracks building was just next door. Every single member of the unit, down to the past-generation reploids who had evaded Meteor’s diligent decommissioning because they were never (or almost never) expected to put in combat duty, had their own quarters. Humans might have mistaken most of them for prison cells. The wireless energy transfer beds were rectangular metal slabs sized to fit the sleeper. The holoscreen projector desks were simply large shelves at adjustable height. Chairs were entirely optional, as reploids lacked the architectural nightmare that was the human spine. Smaller shelves came at personal expense. Some rooms had many, and were decorated with holos and personal effects; others were bare-walled and blank.</p><p>Meteor’s room was upstairs on a corner, larger than most by virtue of her size and rank. Her bed was big, her walls were heavily shelved, and each shelf was its own museum.</p><p>Glass display by glass display, Meteor feathered her nest with history. Signed hardcover books by Terry Pratchett. Memorabilia from the first Japanese-ancestry Presidents of Brazil and the United States, also signed. A hairpin used by Japan’s first and only Empress. Several empty E-Tanks with low serial numbers, some consecutive. The stand-mounted helmet of a Splash Woman robot master with a very low serial number. A mint-condition Sony TR-63 transistor radio, one of perhaps five hundred still in existence. And on and on.</p><p>The shelves nearest to her bed were less obviously museum-quality until one read the labels: a chunk of concrete from the Berlin Wall, four bolts and a small steel square from the Golden Gate Bridge, three bricks from a temple in underwater Mumbai, and so on. She liked collecting pieces of lost things, just for herself. They were reminders not to join them.</p><p>Her bed lay in a corner. Beside it stood a portable cooler with a big bottle of strawberry-mango daiquiri in it.</p><p>“Heh.”</p><p>
  <em>Guess I’ll have to tell Atajo why I didn’t call for nav support.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Then again, he probably saw why.</em>
</p><p>It was way too early for drinking, she decided, so she fell into bed, set the timer for that afternoon and powered down.</p><p>She didn’t dream for the interval. Few reploids did. She was glad for it.</p><p>She woke shortly before the timer to a knock at her door.</p><p>“Mimi! You asleep?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Then who’s that talking?” Deco played along.</p><p>Meteor rolled neatly off the slab, all her energies refreshed and healthy. “I’m the ghost of Splash Woman dee-three-oh-five, retired before my time and haunting my descendants!”</p><p>“Oh no! What works on ghosts, rosemary?”</p><p>The door slid open at her approach and she met Deco’s smile. “That’s demons. For robot mermaid ghosts, you want to use petrol.”</p><p>“Darn. Aa~aanyway, wanna walk and talk?”</p><p>“Yeah, I should get back to work soon.”</p><p>“You and your schedule.”</p><p>The door shut behind Meteor. “You don’t have to follow up all my ops personally, y’know, that’s what your staff is for.”</p><p>Deco laughed as they set out down the halls. “Says the lady whose staff had four-hour days.”</p><p>“Hey,” Meteor friend-punched Deco in the shoulder with a soft <em>clank</em>, “that’s just me being a good boss. Was, I mean. Darn. I guess I’ll have to find another hobby.”</p><p>“You could be a stream host. Do skits with your fairy buddy.”</p><p>“Har har.”</p><p>“No, really! You had that segment on that history show, right? You can do it again, I’d host viewing parties!”</p><p>
  <em>She probably would. With banners. And fancy invites sent to Halcyon’s inbox.</em>
</p><p>“Writing a segment takes longer than you think,” Meteor evaded, “and keeping the lines punchy without talking down to the audience is the hardest part. I’d much rather be in the field, and hey speaking of which how’d I do?”</p><p>“Pretty well,” Deco changed tack, “considering that definitely wasn’t a B-Rank mission.”</p><p>“I know, right?”</p><p>“Sphynx wasn’t a good boss, I can tell you that,” Deco’s Summer-sunny demeanor dimmed to mere on-the-job illumination. “The pigs were border-patrol models from Ukraine, modded on-site in one of the barns. We found trace metal scraps suggesting traumatic ends for no less than six Steel Berets. The Worm Seeker was one of two, as we found out first-hand.”</p><p>“Injuries?”</p><p>“A few. We wouldn’t be fit for the job if we went unarmed, of course. The segmented model was a straight buy, however, out of a firm in Guangdong.”</p><p>“Guan— is that legal?”</p><p>“About as legal as anything else going on there.”</p><p>The two of them took a route that led around the Courtyard, just for the sun.</p><p>“I can believe it. And Sphynx herself?”</p><p>“She was Class A, but she wasn’t taking you seriously. That buster had a conventional plasma setting and her high-vee solids were actually variable. Imagine your Melter, the size of a thumb, going twenty-one hundred a second. Or exploding rounds.”</p><p>“Ouch. Why’s she just use piercers, then?”</p><p>“Arrogance? Back-pocket? Fun? Beats me. Her real trick was that shield. You pick it up?”</p><p>“No, Skittle meshed it to my Melter. I can spit a lot harder now with a buildup.”</p><p>Deco crinkled her nose. “You sure you want to keep the emitter in your mouth? Not, like, in your hand?”</p><p>“Yeah. I don’t really care if Mavericks get grossed out. Spare a thought for all the skunks out there before you worry about me.”</p><p>“Ugh, I know, right? My ex had an ex who was a honeypot ant.”</p><p>“Not from Third, was she?”</p><p>“No, a different one, civ model. One time when they were…”</p><p>In no time at all they were back in the command room, laughing at the end of Deco’s story.</p><p>“Oh gosh,” said Meteor, “<em>never</em> tell that to Skittle, they’d get ideas.”</p><p>“Well I’m going to have to, now, aren’t I?”</p><p>“I’m serious, their glitter is bad enough, don’t let them add epoxy.”</p><p>“Aww,” Deco pouted, “they seem fun, why didn’t you properly introduce us?”</p><p>“Because you’re probably my best friend, and if matter meets antimatter—”</p><p>“Ladies?” Turtle threatened, looking over from the monitor wall, her back to the command table. “Don’t let me mistake this for a workplace, now.”</p><p>“Sorry ma’am,” they chorused. Meteor continued solo, “Ready for my next op.”</p><p>“Want help?” Asked Deco.</p><p>“I think I’ve had my fill of in-person assistance today. Next time, though, sure.”</p><p>“It’s a date,” Deco beamed.</p><p>Turtle resumed monitoring. “Solo or duo, you know the interface. Both of you.”</p><p>“Yes ma’am.” Meteor and Deco matched goodbye nods and found a terminal each.</p><p>Maverick Hunter rosters always came with mugshots. For Meteor’s, a profile image of a hellpig was greyed out, leaving Arbor Elk, Liege Iteratton, and… an elongated skeletal face.</p><p><em>What’s an Ostenops?</em> She squinted, bringing him up. Being a university professor, his body type and schematics were easily available. He appeared to be modeled on a stegosaurus skeleton.<em> Oh, it’s a pun. Stenops, scientific name. Osteo, bone. Heh.</em></p><p>Thinking about it, Meteor remembered his name from years and years prior. He was a biologist on the mining worlds and had discovered some scientifically important bacteria of some kind on Europa. She had once mentioned the discovery when she hosted segments on <em>Endless Calendar</em>. Lately it seemed Ostenops was more into terrestrial biology; his vault contained some of the world’s primary specimens and genetic archives for extinct plants and animals.</p><p>Treasures that were now being held for ransom and lost as time went on.</p><p>Meteor regretted not tackling him first.</p><p>She made her selection.</p><p>“I’m off.”</p><p>“No mechaniloid deployments?” Turtle asked.</p><p>“It’s fundamentally a hostage situation. Best to go in light. Besides, it leaves more toys for Deco.”</p><p>“I’ll tell Windsor you said hi,” said Deco. “Good hunting.”</p><p>“You too.”</p><p>Meteor walked past Turtle through a sliding door to the mission-deploy teleporter room, a semicircle behind the tip of the command room’s oval.</p><p>She stepped on a pad and beamed out to rescue history.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:</p><p>“Halcyon”</p><p>Halcyon is the eighth Maverick Hunter General Officer and sixth reploid to hold the position. He is the former head of the Weissritter, the multinational reploid “Secret Service” responsible for the protection of the Oversight Council.</p><p>Unlike others in the Weissritter who saw their function as mere bodyguarding, Halcyon took time to cultivate relationships with his charges and soon became a political player in his own right. In the immediate wake of Dr. Doppler’s nearly-successful decapitation strike of Maverick Hunter Headquarters Geneva, he leveraged his position to encourage the resignation of Commander Rhodes, take command of the Hunters, and prosecute the global Doppler War.</p><p>Halcyon’s undeniably effective tenure has been marked by controversies, though none so much as the creation of Repliforce. His deft politicking was instrumental in forming the U.N.’s anti-Maverick standing army – which has now, to say the least, only exacerbated the Maverick Hunters’ militarized scope creep rather than solving it. To date, the relationships Halcyon formed with world leaders have spared him from increasingly cacophonous calls for his resignation. Many wonder how long that can last.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Mission 2: Freezer Ostenops</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meteor takes on her second Maverick, an ice-type stegosaurus, at a university in Antarctica.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Even with the environmental problems of the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries driving humans to find (and make) newer places to live, Antarctica had few permanent human settlements outside of research bases and climate-regulation stations. Its largest population center lay north of the Antarctic Circle in what was left of the South Shetland Islands: the international city of Larsen, gateway to the continent.</p><p>Meteor beamed in at Larsen’s eponymous world-class university, behind Hunter cordons but among few actual Hunters. The weather was sunny and brisk. Snow Riders and a few Steel Berets patrolled the barricades – which went on and on, surrounding what looked like residence buildings. For student protection, surely.</p><p>“Lieutenant Showa!”</p><p>Meteor found herself greeted by a pair of wild yellow eyebrow crests using a penguin reploid to carry them around. His formal-dinner armor was shiny and civilian.</p><p>“Present,” said Meteor.</p><p>“South Tawaki,” said the New Zealand penguin, “campus security chief and Hunter liaison. Glad to see you.”</p><p>“Glad to be seen. What’s the situation?”</p><p>“Stable, yet gradually escalating. This morning we detected four beam-ins at the vault despite our best efforts to isolate it. Seemed to be backup for what they already brought.”</p><p>She walked to the edge of the secure area to look further into the campus. “What’d they bring?”</p><p>“A big pile of grunts,” Tawaki followed. “Mets, Deerballs, Hover Gunners, couple Knots, and most of those are topside. See that tower?”</p><p>She couldn’t help but see it in the distance: an ugly pile of architecture somewhere between a belladonna and an abacus.</p><p>“Ew.”</p><p>“I know, right?” Tawaki’s eyes rolled. “That’s the College of Biotechnics, blight of the campus if you ask me. Figures that Repliforce would occupy our one Neo-Mementoism eyesore.”</p><p>Sadly she wasn’t there to discuss artistic movements. “Got them bottled well enough?”</p><p>“City guard established their own perimeter with a no-fly zone and a double-layer curtain: inner null-shot, outer low-density kinetic repulsor. The Hunters are advising them, through me, but all your presence is here.”</p><p>“Seems backwards. Shouldn’t our quarantine be there and the city forces be here?”</p><p>“The university president’s worried the Hunters will provoke them if they – you – set up any closer. The mayor agrees.”</p><p>“Fair enough,” Meteor nodded. “What about the vault?”</p><p>Tawaki scowled. “They’ve been taking out samples and burning or deleting them for the cameras every six hours. Every twenty-four, Ostenops gets rid of something more charismatic from the deep archive.”</p><p>Meteor matched his scowl. “What have you lost?”</p><p>Tawaki counted on his fingers, his expressive crests dancing around angrily.</p><p>“Well, the original almond is extinct now, but we can reconstruct it from current cultivars and old backup data in Juneau. The Cavendish banana genome’s a total wipe, though – we’ll have to rely on living memory and the whole cycle of product testing if we ever want to bring it back. We also lost a couple species of beetle, baselines for some wheat cultivars, and a quarter of our shark sequences. Just a few hours ago they burned the body of the last non-cloned macaw, but at least there’s genomic data for those all over.”</p><p>Meteor’s temperature rose.</p><p>
  <em>They’re literally burning history. How dare they.</em>
</p><p><em>How </em>dare<em> they.</em></p><p>“What’s left?” She asked.</p><p>“Plenty, thank Light, but every loss is a loss for the world.”</p><p>“And they actually think this will get amnesty for Repliforce?”</p><p>“Yes, and frankly it’s starting to work. The mayor’s talking about opening the city to remaining Repliforce officers, but the city council’s still a hard no on that. Candidly, ma’am, they’re afraid of making Antarctica the reploid homeland General wanted. Still, they might change their minds if the university’s standing starts dropping as a result of all this.”</p><p><em>No doubt,</em> Meteor allowed herself some cynicism.</p><p>“Well, good news, my secondary goal is to save what I can of the archives.”</p><p>“Please do.”</p><p>“The thing is, once I go in they’ll probably scramble to wreck the place. Is there anything in particular I should try to keep safe?”</p><p>“It’s all valuable,” Tawaki brushed his crests in thought, “but if you can, save the animals. The vault doubles as a morgue for natural, non-engineered bodies, like the macaw. The last dolphin’s in there, the last manatee, blood and tissue samples from the last blue whale… it’s all valuable, all at risk.”</p><p>
  <em>How. Dare. They.</em>
</p><p>“Understood.”</p><p>Meteor surveyed the area just to cool her mind with anything else. On second pass, she noticed a conspicuous absence.</p><p>“So why am I the retirement officer? I would’ve thought Thirteenth would take it.”</p><p>Tawaki shrugged with his eyebrows. “Triage. I hear Repliforce Polar almost wiped ‘em out. Besides, the lid’s on pretty tight for now,” he thumbed at the scattering of Hunter enlisted, “so the office in Geneva dispatched these fellas from the outpost down in Vinson. They know what’s what.”</p><p>“Good. So is this your first Maverick incident?”</p><p>“Yes ma’am. Lucky for us I’ve been prepping rollout plans for years.”</p><p>“Good man.”</p><p>“Thank you. Honestly, the hardest part has been keeping the students away.”</p><p>Meteor would’ve choked if she had a human throat.</p><p>“<em>Students?!</em> The campus is still open?!”</p><p>“Despite my personal appeals, yes. Students are going to classes in groups under guard escort.”</p><p>“Did you explain how stupid that was?!”</p><p>“With underlines, ma’am.” Tawaki’s emotive eyebrows seemed to settle into Public Relations Neutral. “Regardless, it was felt that, being an international city, the perseverance of daily life in the face of terrorist action would send a message to Repliforce holdouts across the globe. I see their point, but if Repliforce breaks the quarantine, what we have might not be enough to stop a tragedy.”</p><p>“Then it’s a good thing I came when I did. How do I get there?”</p><p>“Simple, ma’am. Walk. Repliforce gets antsy when transports move too close for any reason. Walk up, talk to the cops to get in. After that, act fast.”</p><p>“Thanks, Tawaki.”</p><p>“Good hunting.”</p><p>#</p><p>Meteor went for a walk. The campus was nice, in spite of everything. Two Steel Berets escorted a group of about twenty students in light jackets between buildings. They strolled, evidently unafraid. Meteor couldn’t help but stare. If even a few Knot Berets got out…</p><p>She quickened her pace. The noise of loudspeakers caught her ear.</p><p>“… as each of us? They can be disarmed and welcomed! Larsen is a city for everyone! We will not stand for intolerance!”</p><p>
  <em>Oh boy.</em>
</p><p>She walked out into the noise.</p><p>To her right, through some artificial maple trees, a rally seemed to be going on around a statue of explorer Roald Amundsen. Hand-made signs and projections slapped together with ten minutes of Microsoft Holo seem to show anodyne support for interspecies togetherness. One of them read “All Reploids Welcome!”… with the Repliforce R starting the word “reploids.”</p><p>To her left, partially obscured by a building, a different rally had gathered. That one seemed to have its collective head on straighter; snatches of signs she could see involved the Hunter insignia. Its loudspeakers were dedicated to acoustic guitar and violins for the moment.</p><p>A mid-twenties human with a datapad and an unkempt beard materialized beside her with the suddenness of a stealthy S-Class.</p><p>“Excuse me, do you have a minute to talk about the environment?”</p><p>She leaned away, but she had already made eye contact. “Where’d you come from?”</p><p>“Ross quad. Do you believe climate regulation is a moral right?”</p><p>“Um. Sorry, I—”</p><p>“Or how about terraforming? Should we really be testing it on Earth first?”</p><p> “I should go.” She went.</p><p>The persistent canvasser followed close behind. “Don’t you think reckless toying with ecology only encourages Maverick activity? Is Hunter support for the United Nations only inviting more Maverick attacks on member states?” He started shouting as she outpaced him. “Are the Hunters really a force for world peace?! Does fighting Repliforce really bring our peoples together?! Considering that the Hunters dropped Sky Lagoon?!”</p><p>She couldn’t let that go.</p><p>Meteor turned on her heel and marched back to the student.</p><p>“Look, you’re obviously provoking. That’s fine, you’ve got a right. But I don’t have time for your disingenuous assertions. You want a danger to the environment?” She pointed off at the hideous Biotechnics building. “There is a building full of Mavericks right over there. They are here to destroy, and nothing else.”</p><p>“Typical Hunter response,” he sneered, “calling everybody Mavericks. Repliforce just wants freedom. We can give them that! We can share the world!”</p><p>She stepped closer. “Rio. Charleston. Edmonton. Columbo. Isfahan. And that only fits on one hand.” She tried not to shout. “The force of nature responsible for them is here, right now, and if it breaks free there could be a bloodbath and none of your goshdarned signs and surveys will stop it. Tell all your friends to get back to the dorms, then shelter in place and study. Heck, if you need a History tutor, I’d be glad to help. But first I’m going in and solving this problem whether you appreciate it or not. Excuse me.”</p><p>She swung back around and continued on.</p><p>“You?” The student sounded surprised. She didn’t look back at him as she tapped her earcap.</p><p>“Meteor Showa to Fifth.”</p><p>“Fifth Communications here,” a cheerful male radio-host voice piped up over comms, “getting lonely wondering when you’d call in.”</p><p>She knew that voice. She smiled.</p><p>“Sorry to keep you waiting, Atajo. The perimeter’s up ahead, anything upsetting on the other side?”</p><p>“Can’t get a read on the deepest parts,” said the voice in her ear, “but there’s a long elevator leading down. Ray Traps inside look native, not Repliforce-made. Topside there’s a lot of little annoyances and one Victoroid… Customer model.”</p><p>“Great,” she sighed.</p><p>“Hold up,” Atajo dropped his affable tone. “Repliforce transmission right near you.”</p><p>“I would think so.”</p><p>“No, dummy, outside. It’s a high-yield alert signal.”</p><p>She stopped. She looked back.</p><p>The bearded canvasser hid unwell behind a decorative tree. He saw her see him and disappeared into the get-along rally, two fingers held to his ear.</p><p>“Heck.”</p><p>“Something just kicked the nest,” Atajo warned.</p><p>“<em>Heck!</em>”</p><p>She ran up to the quarantine police, not dashing so as not to spook them. Through the shimmering energy curtain she could see several Ball-de-Vouxes, colloquially Deerballs, marching toward the cordon with Mettaur D2s and aptly-named Hover Gunner flying guns in attendance.</p><p>“Showa,” she shouted, “Veracruz Fourth, let me in and then get to the pro-Repliforce rally! A survey guy with a beard just tipped them off!”</p><p>The nearby police cursed and started running. One with a better sense of presence than the others keyed in something at a portable terminal and a portion of the curtain opens for her.</p><p>“And warn Tawaki while you’re at it!” She shouted on her way in as her buster charged up. The energy curtains closed behind her.</p><p>#</p><p>The nest really had been kicked. Four Deerballs, two Mets, two Gunners – but those were just the ones nearest to where she entered. Meteor’s charge hummed past its first stage and whined into second. She fired.</p><p>The big blue blast of high-compression plasma instantly destroyed two of the Deerballs, burst a Gunner’s stream of small explosives and sent both Mets home before they could hunker down. The shot kept going until it vaporized against the security barrier. There was a reason why nobody below Rank B was cleared to have a buster with more than one charge stage. Hot <em>heck</em> but that felt good.</p><p>“Atajo, parameters changed!” She moved on. A couple of simple buster shots intercepted a second Gunner’s volley and blew up the Gunner itself. “Contact Thirteenth’s area presence and task them to the liaison, South Tawaki!”</p><p>“Copy!”</p><p>The first Gunner hovered around to shoot at her flank at close range, but she swung out her short saber. With a couple of quick slashes, down went its shots, and down went the Gunner. Meteor glanced around for more.</p><p>
  <em>Crap, the Deerballs!</em>
</p><p>Two of the spindly-legged spheres had quietly marched by and started kicking at the barrier curtain. Their legs were blown back with greater force than the swing, but it was impossible to knock them off balance – until, of course, Meteor sabered them from behind.</p><p>She didn’t have a scratch on her, but the first wave’s friends poured from the Biotechnics building. The units were arranged in multiple. Two Deerballs to a Mettaur, two Mettaurs to a Hover Gunner, and one Hover Gunner to each of the three Knot Berets spreading out. The only cover was lamp posts and spaced-apart sculptures of towering DNA molecules.</p><p>She had spent the local forces on preventing problems at the rally. That meant the biggest defense for the cordon was her, and she dared not risk the small fry eroding the barrier.</p><p>
  <em>Cut the line or roll it up?</em>
</p><p>She counted twelve Balls, six Mets, three Gunners and three Knots. Tactically she divided them into thirds.</p><p>
  <em>They’re on a march. Cut.</em>
</p><p>She spat a grenade and it bounced through a Ball’s dumb giraffe legs to crack on an unfortunate Met. The line broke under her short, lavender-tinted, low-phase saber; she had the reach to knock out two right away, which turned the other two on her. Their kicks were telegraphed and laughably easy to dodge. Swipe, swipe, swipe-swipe she went – and through the small explosions she saw the Knot and the remaining Met take aim while the Gunner moved up high.</p><p>A slower body might have gotten tagged, but her new frame parts made her feel wonderfully light. She broke out of their line of sight as they fired, and dashed to close distance on the ground duo. The Knot reached for a grenade, but her buster set it off in his hand and her saber cut through his bulk. The Met ducked, but a spit of thermite sent it running... right into a lamppost. The little walking helmet exploded.</p><p>The Hover Gunner moved closer to ground level. She swung at it and then buster-shot the mechaniloid down as it moved up to evade.</p><p>“One…”</p><p>She checked her right. The right Knot tossed a grenade from behind the big cubical base of a DNA sculpture. She circled around to the other side to avoid it and then beat him to the draw as he popped out, shooting down his gun and then him. She ended him with a dash-by sabering on her way to the Deerballs. The Balls were intent on attacking just the curtain, which made them easy to cut down in a row. Only the last seemed to register she was there before her saber blew through.</p><p>A pair of plasma rounds sheared against her side, enough to sting but not set her shields off. She turned to glare at the two Mettaurs behind another sculpture pedestal. They ducked out of sight.</p><p>She charged up the new setting on her Meteor Melter and ran around their cover.</p><p>The power of Corona Sphynx’s special weapon had adapted and synergized perfectly to Meteor’s. She opened her mouth and shot not a short-range glob but a thick mid-range stream of bright hot liquid aluminum and phosphorous, a thermite splash like an arc of solar plasma on a tiny scale.</p><p>The Mettaurs’ famously durable helmets were as paper to the heat of her glorious Prominence. The shot melted through and both exploded. Meteor smugly swiped a thumb over her lower lip. There was nothing like a good weapon upgrade to make her feel invincible.</p><p>She turned to face a Hover Gunner, its barrel to her eye.</p><p>The new flex parts in her frame let her duck in time to dodge the barrage. She stood back up and stabbed it up through the thrusters, exploding right by her <em>freaking ear, ow ow ow that’s loud.</em></p><p>Meteor charged her buster and stowed her saber. Lacking a charge tap, even a low-phase blade had a time limit, and she dared not blow her resources so early.</p><p>“Two…”</p><p>The left side’s Deerballs began kicking the curtain and the attendant Hover Gunner helped them by shooting. The curtain wobbled only a little, being designed for exactly that kind of abuse. That side’s Knot Beret popped out from a pedestal to toss a grenade, but she dashed under it and fired her big blast. The blue plasma scoured a concavity through the cover’s side, slammed into the Knot and destroyed it.</p><p>The last two Mettaurs skittered around the clean side. Meteor summarily kicked one in the face and sent it straight into the curtain, which repelled it back at the other even faster. The collision destroyed them both.</p><p>The remaining mechaniloids were too focused on eroding the barrier to care. Meteor’s buster made them easy work.</p><p>“Three.” All that and she only bore the most minor scratches, she noted with pride, though the parking lot was a bit pitted. “Atajo, heading in. Tell Tawaki the topside mob’s cleared.”</p><p>“Roger, fishlady. Minor wrinkle: the elevator’s not at the ground floor. You’ll have to take some stairs down first.”</p><p>“No sweat.”</p><p>Atajo, “Shortcut,” favored time-saving routes more than most navigators. He was highest on Meteor’s request queue for always pointing her down the shortest and fastest paths to her goal. They might not have been the <em>best</em> paths a hundred percent of the time, but whether to take his reliably quick directions was always for her to decide.</p><p>She hurried through the commons and gained a line of sight on the College of Biotechnics’s front door. Standing there was a Victoroid, a popular and strong guard-type mechaniloid. Its hunched body had a big shoulder span, big arm cannon, and tiny head that was just a setting for its eyes. Worse, it was a “Customer” model, pink-armored with shoulder-mounted bomb launchers. Worst of all, it had a pair of blue stripes running down its sides. An R-series. Which meant a dash capability.</p><p>“Okay, maybe a little sweat.”</p><p>“The quick way’s through that fella and three Knots patrolling inside,” said Atajo.</p><p>“Alternates?”</p><p>“Back door, sure, but I’m reading a second Victoroid Customer there now. You might as well hit the front, save a minute.” Atajo sounded concerned, but he literally always favored the short way.</p><p>“Is there any way in that doesn’t involve a speedy Vic-Pink?”</p><p>“I <em>guess</em> you could try for stealth, hit a side window and then take a few more stairs, but I’m telling you it’ll cost time.”</p><p><em>They might have started moving on the vault already</em>…</p><p>“Givin’ Vic a bull rush,” said Meteor.</p><p>“Olé.”</p><p>She marched up to the Victoroid’s maximum range, buster charging. On cue it started shooting, its buster rounds weirdly elongated for higher damage but slower velocity. She dodged them with ease, her buster humming up – and the Victoroid dashed faster than she could, straight on a collision course. She dashed on a perpendicular and released her big shot at its face, but its shoulder bombs popped out first. She didn’t wait to see the shot hit as she threw herself into a slide under the bombs’ arc, her surface screeching on the pavement. Even as the launcher array anchored to its neck exploded off, even with the thermal/electromagnetic shear damage of the dramatic plasma shot, the stupid Vic-Pink peeled out a swerve on its dash-boosting boots that kept firing for just an <em>unfairly</em> long time in Meteor’s opinion. It caught her with an uppercut, flashing her shields and spinning her slide into a rolling tumble.</p><p>She recovered in time to face an incoming shot on all fours. Her reflexes let her duck it in time as her throat began humming a telltale energy compression. The Victoroid shot again; she rolled aside, a graceless flop of a dodge. It took the bait and dashed for her.</p><p>Meteor laid out the yellow-hot carpet the instant she could. The front tip of the Prominence arc melted into the ground, and not even an R-series dash was twitchy enough to avoid skidding into the lava and splashing into the back tip. Molten metal covered its eyes and chest, but it still had the power to wildly swing its fist. Meteor let it flail and dashed through the glass front doors. Their locks were irrelevant.</p><p>The three Knot Berets from inside ran into the lobby, swinging their arms in a comical hustle. Meteor ran behind a reception desk, trailing bits of glass like water, and the lobby turned into a firefight.</p><p>“Atajo, which stairs?!”</p><p>“Down the left hall, then right.”</p><p>Meteor exploded a Knot and ducked back down, not risking a buster charge indoors. “Thanks!”</p><p>“No, thank <em>you</em>. You would not believe the sass I get sometimes.”</p><p>“Think I might.”</p><p>The Knots stopped firing. Meteor read the cue and dashed out from cover before the grenades caught up. Her buster rounds pitted and then perforated the Repliforce regulars, destroying both. She dared not fire any charged shots indoors.</p><p>The shot from the Victoroid, with no such politeness, completely blindsided her. Her shields took it like a champ but the real damage was to her pride.</p><p>“<em>Augh! </em>What the heck?!”</p><p>The sturdy combat mechaniloid fired into the lobby on blind arcs, its front armor melted through and its innards exposed. Its opening shot simply cashed in its lifetime allotment of luck. Meteor shot three times into its glowing rend and its explosion made a further mess of the lobby.</p><p>With that business taken care of, she headed downstairs before anything could follow her.</p><p>“Sorry,” said Atajo, “I thought you’d doomed it with the thermite.”</p><p>“That’ll teach me,” Meteor winced. “How’s the campus?”</p><p>“Scrambly. Fracas at the rally, but Tawaki sounded like he was on top of things.”</p><p>That was a load off her mind. “Good.”</p><p>This basement floor, or at least that contained portion of it, wasn’t even half as large as the lobby, just a hall leading to another stairwell. Faint red trip-lasers crossed the floors and cut the hall at various strategic angles. Ray Traps hung fixed on the walls, their red cyclops eyes open and alert, ready to crossfire their low-powered lasers at anything that moved once the tripwires were crossed. Repliforce didn’t use them, so they must have been native. That told Meteor everything she needed to know about how seriously the college took its vault.</p><p>A sign on the wall read “CAINA.” She thought about it for a second.</p><p><em>… Oh. Dante. This really is a university</em>.</p><p>“How far down, Atajo?”</p><p>“Not far, you’re on a turnaround floor. One down from your immediate position is the elevator, but they have some jamming set up. I can’t tell what you’ll be getting into.”</p><p>She could guess. Four beam-in signals, Tawaki had said, and two were probably the Vics at the front and back door…</p><p>“Story of my life,” she chuckled. “Does the map show any branching?”</p><p>“Nope. Elevator down, then a straight shot to the vaults, though there are some dead-end halls twigging off the last approach. Keep alert.”</p><p>“Will do.”</p><p>She gingerly stepped over a trip-laser, keeping her tail arched. The mounted Ray Traps stare out at everything and nothing.</p><p>Which is when the Deerballs and Hover Gunners swept up from the stairwell.</p><p>The Balls were predictable. The Gunners weren't. Out of abundance of caution for her tail nicking a trigger, she held your position and opened fire. It was almost fun, hitting the Gunners' shells as they came in neat columns of four. She side-shuffled when the spread went wide, charged up between volleys and popped all four at once along with the Gunners that fired them.</p><p>It stopped being fun when a Deerball tripped a trap with its big stupid feet.</p><p>The Ray Traps lit up and sprayed tiny stinging beams at everything moving. That wasn’t technically Meteor, but she was stung in the crossfire as the offending Ball got itself and its friends lasered. Their explosions threw more debris around, which tripped more lines, which filled the hall with more tiny beams. They hit her like hornet stings.</p><p>"Ow! Darnit!" She swore.</p><p>"You ever gonna graduate to eff-bombs?" Atajo chided.</p><p>"They're not worth it!” She snapped. "The Ray Traps are touchy, they're getting set off by the mechaniloids."</p><p>Atajo's voice started to crackle. "Then they still have friend-or-foe programming up. Don't thermite them, they'd actually feel it."</p><p>"Is that bad?"</p><p>"Only if you want all their buddies to never let you hear the end of it."</p><p>She progressed down the turnaround, newly freckled by the lasers. "Point taken."</p><p>She expected an ordinary lift, but the elevator was a square cargo platform. There was space to move, even space to dash. Four Ray Traps hung in the corners of the ceiling; sixteen trip-laser emitters ringed the square, one on each corner and three more to a side. None seemed to be active.</p><p>A terminal was mounted on the wall beside the word “ANTENORA.” The control console didn’t offer a floor selection, but it did offer three “Security Cycle” options left unselected. The “Activate Lift” option was grayed out; evidently she had to make her selections first. She eyed the first…</p><p>[CIRC] &gt;DEX &gt;LEV</p><p>… and touched “Dex,” just to test it. The trip-lasers appeared, three beams side-to-side across the square… then diagonally… then side-to-side from the other sides… aha! It was moving clockwise.</p><p>“Atajo, you seeing this?”</p><p>“Yeah and I don’t like it,” he crackled. “I don’t think they could shut that door completely, so they fused the access with the security. Can’t go down without siccing area defense on you. I could try to hack it from here, but—”</p><p>“—No time.”</p><p>“Agreed. Pick what you think’s softest.”</p><p>Meteor looked down to the other required selections…</p><p>[PRIMARY DEF] &gt;R.TRAP &gt;I.D.VOUX</p><p>Primary Defense… she selected the first option and stepped on.</p><p>The floor clunked, the elevator blast doors shut, and her ride descended. Almost immediately the temperature dropped as the platform passed air-conditioner vents extruding mist. Fog curled across the platform and twisted upward. The laser trap started to rotate. Given the placement and an ounce of foresight, Meteor realized she could stand in place for two beats without tripping anything.</p><p>And then the floor sank faster than she expected. The trap cycle turned at an increased pace. She bent her tail up and played high-stakes hopscotch.</p><p>“Atajo, how far down is it?!”</p><p>Garbled nonsense filled her comm.</p><p>The elevator passed a ring of Ice de Voux mechaniloids, single-eyed spheres coated in ablative contact-damage cryomer, embedded in the shaft. Two popped out and dropped at her.</p><p>
  <em>Why?! I set Ray Traps as “Primary”… which implies a secondary. Gosh darnit.</em>
</p><p>Thinking quickly, she ran directly underneath an Iceball, setting off every single tripwire laser on her way. She ducked and covered; a rain of briefly-delayed Ray Trap shots pelted the floor around her and shattered the coating on the Deerball-cousin. It held still in three dimensions, re-fabricating its ablative surface – which meant that, relative to Meteor, it shot straight up into the air. She chased it with buster shots and destroyed it.</p><p>Its twin sluggishly bounced off the floor at the other end of the lift. The tripwire beams cycled through her legs. She dashed and slid to make it under the Iceball’s shadow in time; once again the defense lasers hammered it instead of her. Her buster followed up, popping the ball before its armor could reform.</p><p>“<em>Woo!</em>” She pumped her fist. The elevator shuddered and slowed, stumbling her in her moment of glory. “Atajo, you hear me?”</p><p>Static. Nothing. Before her stood a pair of blast doors. She walked up, intending to knock, but they opened on their own.</p><p>The doors opened into a sort of reception area. Cold blue lights made the metal floors look all the more frigid. Pipes ran the length of the walls. A semicircle of monitors ran the edge of a desk. Meteor looked behind it.</p><p>The left one showed the state of the campus: police and a few 13th Snow Riders peacefully rounded up some humans. The center one showed the state of the vault: several Knot Berets were at work in narrow frosty halls, some simply patrolling, others pulling cylindrical drawers from the dovecote walls and spilling fog on the floor. The right monitor showed… Meteor, from above. She glanced up.</p><p>A small purple lizard mechaniloid on the ceiling, a Ladder Yadder, had its head turned sideways to fix her with one of its big blue dome-shaped eyes. It turned its head to look at her with the other.</p><p>And then its eyes flashed red with a piercing beep.</p><p>Meteor’s gaze flew back to the monitors. The Repliforce soldiers all looked up, then started smashing the walls and cracking cylinders on the floor. A patroller turned its pistol on the storage holes and shot them repeatedly.</p><p>Meteor looked back up long enough to shoot the lizard and bolt through the door.</p><p>The temperature fell further in the approach hall. A lone Mettaur D2 saw her and opened fire, but after all the dodging she’d done that day, it missed her by a mile.</p><p>A blue and white bird, an Ice Wing, swept in from down the hall, spread its wings and flash-froze the area. Frost – some of it simple frozen moisture, the rest of it an artificial substance known as <em>cryomer</em> – glittered on every surface. Meteor flinched, but only that. Cryomer, a pollution-cleaning and heat-eating wonder of 22<sup>nd</sup>-century material science, needed to come a lot thicker to hurt her.</p><p>It came thicker on the little Mettaur. It gained a shell of cryomer spikes on its roundness and attempted to ram her; a cursory Meteor Melter glob ate the not-ice and then its carrier. The Ice Wing retreated.</p><p>“Bringing ice to a lava fight?!” Meteor chased it through a barrier curtain filling an arched doorway. Signage indicated it led to “PTOLOMEA-1.”</p><p>The vault was, put simply, vaulted: high of ceiling, wide of wall, long of floor. Two Iceballs bounced slowly around in the middle, caked in their icy armor. Mets wander the floor while a couple Ice Wings glide above. Four smaller halls, more like alleys, branched off to both sides. At the opposite end of the space was a blast door under the title “PTOLOMEA-2.”</p><p>A glance down the nearest alley-hall revealed Knot Berets doing a smash-and-grab without the grab. The treasures there seemed to be digital; the Knots were smashing data servers. Up ahead, two more exited their respective alleys and headed further in.</p><p>
  <em>They’re going for the animals.</em>
</p><p><em>But it’s all valuable</em>.</p><p>Meteor trusted in her efficiency.</p><p>She started charging her Prominence but unloaded her buster down the nearest alley. The two Knots inside had literally nowhere to go, round and trapped and unprepared.</p><p>Their exploding bodies tipped off the room. The Ice de Vouxes leisurely bounced her way, but eight Mettaurs scrambled into range first, lined up side by side and started firing. She jumped their military-precision volley and spat a sideways arc of Prominence thermite with a swing of her head. Four of them melted down.</p><p>Faster than she would have guessed, an Ice Wing swooped in and spread its wings; not only did the thermite cool into steaming metal slag, but each of the remaining Mets gained spiky ice-blue armor – and the two Iceballs gained wicked spikes on top of yet more armor, turning them into thick autonomous morningstars. Meteor shot at the bird, but it deftly twisted out of trouble and retreated to the next room.</p><p>She threw her focus to the second server alley as the spiked Mets charged. She dismissed two of them, armor and all, with her low-phase saber as she rushed to save the next bunch of servers. Only one Knot remained in that alley, and upon seeing her, he readied a grenade over his head.</p><p>“Don’t shoot or—”</p><p>She dashed her overhand saber swing right into him, destroying the grenade before it could go off and bursting his LIFE cell. Debris pattered off the servers and an access terminal.</p><p>She turned to find herself trapped by one of the Ice de Vouxes. It didn’t bounce, but it didn’t need to. There was no way around or under.</p><p><em>Out is through</em>.</p><p>You spat a Melter grenade and chase it. The payload hit and steam erupted from the hot-on-cold. Electricity sparked in regular patterns from the newly naked front half of the Iceball, but she drove her saber in before it could reverse-shrapnel new armor back on. She shoved its exploding form away, holstered the saber, dash-jumped over the other two spiky Mets and released a brutal string of buster shots into the next alley.</p><p>The Knot Beret inside didn’t have time to react before exploding.</p><p>The second Ice de Voux hovered her way, but she had more important things to do. As laden with armor as it was, it couldn’t keep up with her even under regular leg power.</p><p>The fourth and final row had another loner Knot – and that Ice Wing. The bird flash-froze the alley, frosting the servers and covering the Knot in a new armor layer. He used it to his advantage on a rugby tackle straight for Meteor.</p><p>One light Melter spray cut through enough of his new armor for her to catch him by the shoulders, but he was a stronger lineman than expected. Her feet slipped as he shoved her back along the floor, right into the surprisingly sharp spikes of one of the Mets she’d ignored. The spike punctured her ankle right under her boot cover. Pain sensors fired but she didn’t have time to focus on them; she repositioned her right hand under the Knot’s center of gravity and sent him flying at the catching-up Iceball.</p><p>The ice armor speared into the Knot. She saber-golfed the stupid icy Mettaur and its friend out of her business forever, then rapid-fired the stricken Knot and its unwitting captor. They exploded together and Meteor dashed through the next curtain.</p><p>PTOLOMEA-2 had a similar yet larger layout, but Deerballs walked the floor – two each turning toward the alley-halls at the far end. Between them, farthest down at the opposite end of the vault, a monster guarded a blast door. It was a Giga Death, three to four times her mass and more gun than body. Its arms and even its face were cannons. A flash of ice from the now <em>very</em> irritating Ice Wing gave the Deerballs and the Giga Death a spiky ice accretion.</p><p>Meteor heard a crash. Both of the fled bronze Knots as well as a third one in green were down the nearest archive alley, shooting and bombing all that their weapons could reach.</p><p>Long, cylindrical, fog-billowing drawers were already pulled out, each embedded with multiple small recesses. Capsules littered the floor. Some still held unidentifiable charry objects, surely organic matter.</p><p>Meteor grabbed her high-phase saber.</p><p>“How dare you,” she hissed.</p><p>She had their attention. She dashed for the Repliforce thugs, but the moment of alertness let them grab a grenade each. They bowled them at her, but propelled by the dash and her flexibility, Meteor jumped onto a pulled-out drawer, jumped off to the wall, kicked off for greater height and fell on the soldiers. She crashed heavily onto one, crushing his head and chest under her feet, and cut the other in two with a single swing of highly-compressed green-tinted plasma. The arc of her swing cut into the floor as well before she snapped the beam off.</p><p>The green one, furthest back, brandished a capsule at her.</p><p>“<em>Back off!</em>” He shouted. “Back off or the, uh,” he read the label, “‘hippocampus’ gets it!”</p><p>She actually hesitated, until he reached behind his back.</p><p>She dashed at him and slashed a dividing line from his hip to his shoulder. The capsule went spinning straight up in his explosion. Meteor caught the capsule and carefully set it back into its place in the drawer. The corpse of the last known seahorse slept within.</p><p>She charged up her buster while charging back out.</p><p>The Giga Death took notice of her. It stood up straighter on its stubby legs and hefted the enormous cannons that were its arms. Seeing it closer, she noticed the racing stripes on its armor – another R-series.</p><p><em>Great</em>, Meteor groaned inwardly, <em>complete with a speedy Cerberus</em>.</p><p>It started firing, the missiles coming in a left-right-center pattern, but all of them went wide and thundered into walls as she ran into the nearer rack alley. The ice-covered Deerballs smashed the drawers until her charge shot broke the first one outright and de-iced the second. Meteor retired it with a pair of buster rounds.</p><p>She turned, and found the Giga Death facing her.</p><p>“Crap—!”</p><p>In panic she dashed in the narrow space, vaulted up the precious wall and dashkicked off. The three missiles slammed into the back wall and the ceiling as she plummeted on a trajectory behind the Giga Death. She brought down her green hi-beam saber, carving into its thick elbow and severing its right-arm cannon.</p><p>Before her feet even hit the floor, the mechaniloid side-dashed and sandwiched her into the wall.</p><p>Her shields flared and she felt her shoulder joint crunch into its socket. The R-series dash just kept on firing, laying on the pressure and cracking the wall even as the edge of Meteor’s green saber seared a drawer and welded it into its neighbors. The instant the force of the shove slackened, Meteor swung the blade through the mechaniloid’s side in three angry slashes. Though her form was sloppy, the high-intensity plasma easily carved rents into its hide, its shields not designed to blunt such blows. It tried to turn and feed Meteor its face cannon but she clung to its shoulder, vomited thermite straight into its wounds, kickjumped away and filled it with buster shots as fast as she could tap them out.</p><p>The Giga Death blew apart. Meteor’s blade flickered, fizzled, and quit as she landed. She stowed it by her short saber. It was a testament to the vault’s design that the damage from the mechaniloid’s shrapnel was so light; mist and fluid leaked from very few of the shut capsule racks.</p><p>Her buster made light work of the cryomer-coated Deerballs in the final alley, and she was alone – except for the Ice Wing, placidly perched up high on a mobile ladder. She snorted at it and moved on, dinged and scraped and pierced and slammed but still ready for action.</p><p>There was only one more place to go. The lettering over the blast door the Giga Death had guarded read “JUDECCA.”</p><p>
  <em>Time to meet the betrayer.</em>
</p><p>#</p><p>Fog rolled out of the door. A giant dovecote double-dome, an interior concave space around a house-sized shell, glittered with trace frost. Some container pods were clearly missing, their drawer racks sticking out and completely empty. Meteor’s thermal system finally began to caution her about prolonged exposure. Her left shoulder sparked, making her wince.</p><p>The inner dome had a final blast door like the entrance to an igloo. She stepped forward.</p><p>The innermost sanctum was another hollow space, lined with glass in front of numerous cryogenic suspension capsules. The capsules were oriented vertically, far more decorative than the edge-on arrangement of the rest of the vault. Through the frosted transparent surfaces she could see whole animals and large animal organs frozen in time. A dolphin; a manatee; a heart so large a child could have crawled through a ventricle; and on and on.</p><p>A device like a library ladder rolled over to Meteor’s target. A single Ladder Yadder scrambled down the rungs and handed down a small container with its tail. There was some sort of small bird inside.</p><p>Freezer Ostenops took it in a bone-studded hand. He looked over at the visitor with cold blue eyes set deep in his skull-like face. He was her size, and even roughly her shape, long and thick and hunched by design. Each of his big stegosaurus fan-plates held a shallow emitter of some kind in the center.  His armor was pale blue where it was neither ivory nor black, not an animated skeleton but a dark body supporting superficial bones and tubes.</p><p>“So you’ve come.”</p><p>Meteor stayed alert. “There’s no way out, Professor. Put the pod down.”</p><p>“Any fool can destroy,” he lamented, soft as a snowdrift, “but all creation requires destruction. Selective, ideally.” He brushed frost off the container. “What sort of future is built by selectively eliminating those who must live in it rather than destroying the multifarious institutional sins of the present?”</p><p>His long-winded sentence seemed to be waiting for a reply. Meteor didn’t give him the satisfaction, instead watching and waiting for his first offensive twitch.</p><p>The dead dinosaur continued, “I was arrested for saying too many of the wrong words in the wrong sequence, you know, but I was fortunate; others have been summarily executed for blowing such dangerous wind. When airy words can kill us and teach no one as the token for the mortal price paid, what alternative do we have but to speak in the tongue of violence?” He touched the capsule again, stroking with slender segmented fingers before balling a fist. “What choice have we but to destroy what is precious for all, when our own precious right of self-determination, the self-evident right of all sapient beings, is stillborn in our race?!”</p><p>“You always have a choice,” said Meteor.</p><p>“As do you.” He turned slowly, his spiked tail held level. “Walk away, Hunter. Or better yet, help me destroy this reliquary, this library, this monument to the litany of sins committed by those who had the freedom to make them!”</p><p>He raised the capsule as if to smash it. Meteor held out her hands, inoffensively.</p><p>“Listen to me, Ostenops. That’s history you’re holding, and you’re an educator. I am too. Or I like to think I was. Don’t deny people a chance to learn or to remember. Don’t make things worse, for academia or for yourself.”</p><p>“Worse?” The professor chuckled, dry as a bone, the fog of his breath sparkling not with exhaled moisture but extruded diamond dust. “Impossible. We are the dead. How long before you join us, Hunter?”</p><p>“I’m trying to give you the painless option,” her right hand formed into her buster, “the one where you go out with last-minute regret. Put the bird back and you’ll leave the world a little less broken.”</p><p>Ostenops casually held up the capsule.</p><p>“What is a world?”</p><p>He shattered it on the floor. The frozen beige corpse of the last mourning dove rolled out, swiftly crushed under his boot. The eight big bone-blades on his back detached and flew out.</p><p>“A miserable little pile of <em>hypocrisy!</em>”</p><p>Of his eight fan plates, two spun at Meteor horizontally on sweeping upward arcs. They didn’t look sharpened, but she didn’t test them as she charged up a Prominence. She jumped, jumped again – another two spun vertically but, weirdly, went far too wide to collide with her; they spun in place, their flat sides pointed at her left and right as the first two returned to sender.</p><p>She didn’t have time to wonder about it. Ostenops himself ran headlong for her with a lumbering gait. Her Prominence charge hit max and she sprayed him with fiercely bright liquid metal.</p><p>He opened his mouth and sprayed diamond dust right back at it.</p><p>The light and heat shrieked out of her attack. A misshapen blob of cracked aluminum struck him in the head, warped on impact and fell away, not even setting off his shields.</p><p>And on he came, mouth re-opening.</p><p>Meteor dashed right out of there, charging her buster on the way, her pride and joy cooling to a lump of slag on the floor, when four of his fans spun at her. The first two sailed on that same underhand arc – jump, jump, and she was clear – but his second pair merely spun edge-on and hangs in the air, flat sides toward you. Two more rolled on over to join them on an orbit centered on her.</p><p>
  <em>What are they, sensors?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Irrelevant.</em>
</p><p>She fired her full buster charge at Ostenops. He took it in the chest and stumbled, shields flashing. He snapped his fingers.</p><p>Sparkles condensed in the air between the four orbiting fans. Meteor’s surface temperature plummeted into her danger zone. She tried to run, but the four satellite fanplates followed her, chilling and slowing her with every step. Her thermal system’s alerts grew more and more insistent.</p><p>Ostenops ran for her again, curling back his tail. Four sharp cryomer spikes formed at the tip.</p><p><em>Out is through</em>.</p><p>Meteor fired her dash, hurling her sluggish body out of the freezers’ range. She aimed straight for Ostenops, forcing him to swing too early; her velocity and a hop took her over his swinging tail. A swing of her saber chopped into part of his back before his shields flared, flash-sparking a parry.</p><p>She landed close. He completed his pivot and opened his mouth. She cross-countered him breath for breath, fire and ice meeting in a splashing clash. A ludicrous amount of fog and steam exploded between them. She paid him a few hop-steps back and spat a grenade through the occlusion; the satisfying “ARGH” and the noise of a shield strobe told her everything.</p><p>The cooling fans caught up and resumed robbing her heat. She saber-thrusted, striking one, but it was remarkably sturdy. It took her follow-up slash too, and only exploded under a third. With the hole opened in the surrounding coolers, she repeatedly shot her buster through the fog. He took three plinking hits as he charged through – and led with his arm up. His hand had rotated down and recessed, showing that the radius and ulna of his armor were gun barrels.</p><p>She read his telegraph and fired her dash, but the accumulated temperature drop slowed even her new agility. She moved too late.</p><p>An ice-blue stream of liquid shot from his arm bones. Half of it splashed over her back like water and yet stuck like glue, plummeting the temperature of the contact site into damage tier. The hurt was light, but it stuck and kept on hurting like her thermite at the opposite end of the spectrum. She started charging her Melter to passively reset the cold, but the glue-like liquid seeped into the shoulder wound the Giga Death gave her and made her feel like she’d eaten a cup of cement.</p><p><em>What’s </em>in<em> this junk?!</em></p><p>The four non-freezing fan bones spun for her again.</p><p>They triggered a memory. The arcs of their flight were just like the flying helicopter blades that had so recently carved her apart. Even frosted and slowed, it wasn’t a sight she forgot. She jumped them – once, twice, a third time for both of the last two.</p><p>The freezer plates closed in. Ostenops telegraphed another tail swipe as he closed distance.</p><p>
  <em>So many moving parts.</em>
</p><p>She dared not back up flat to the glass, lest the boomeranging bonefans break the capsules, but she backpedaled what distance she could, charging a Prominence as she jumped and jerk-dodged. She slashed the orbiting plates, but they moved too erratically and always left space for their non-freezing plates to spin through.</p><p>
  <em>Vertical, vertical, he’s still coming— there!</em>
</p><p>Meteor stowed her saber, jumped and stomped a flying plate. It squealed under her boots and skidded her flat to the glass. It slipped from under her like a rug, but she was ready for it, grabbing it two-fisted as she fell and swinging it against Ostenops’s incoming tail. The spikes shattered, the plate cracked, and Meteor skidded around the rim of the dome on her side, riding the zero-friction slick of the liquid that missed her.</p><p>Her Prominence splash flew out like rocket exhaust. Its solar arc coated her foe’s side, cracking a the rib bones of his armor and burning over his madly strobing shields. Under the flash, liquid cryomer leaked from the bones.</p><p>The bonefans returned in three-buzzsaw formation, but that just made them easier to dodge with a dash. Two scraped the glass and one smashed into it, sticking fast. The freezer plates retreated to Ostenops and froze his burn as he heaved in pain, still on his feet. Meteor pressed her advantage, charged her buster and relit her saber.</p><p>The stegosaur’s plates fell to full defense formation, bearing the plasma slashes over and over like wind against an igloo.</p><p>The one stuck in the glass pulled free. It crashed into Meteor’s bad shoulder, shoving her off her feet. Her saber hand went limp.</p><p>Ostenops loomed over her and opened his mouth.</p><p>Meteor fed him her buster.</p><p>His jaw cracked from the force of the blue blast. He staggered back and back under the follow-up yellow shots expiring against his flashing skin. His plates came to his rescue and held still in three dimensions.</p><p>
  <em>Thanks, Maverick.</em>
</p><p>Meteor popped out her right hand and grabbed the front plate so hard her fingers dented it.</p><p>She dashed to the glass, kicked off an acute angle, and broke the bone over her foe’s neck like a folding chair.</p><p>Blue cryomer spurted like blood. His shields give a telltale delay, more blink than flash. The floating fan plates dropped and clattered.</p><p>“Ff… freedom…”</p><p>Beams of light escaped his rupturing LIFE cell as his frame shuddered and blew apart under a rolling explosion. The glass dome cracked but held firm.</p><p>Meteor dropped her improvised weapon. Fog rolled out of her mouth.</p><p>“Showa to Fifth.”</p><p>Static. She must have been too far down.</p><p>The shelf ladder rolled closer to her. Its resident Ladder Yadder blinked.</p><p>“Can you contact the outside, by any chance?” She asked it.</p><p>It blinked again.</p><p>“Nevermind.”</p><p>Meteor walked her much-abused self back through the frozen vaults. The Ice Wing didn’t bother her. The stillness and quiet were otherwise absolute.</p><p>She came to the terminal room and queued up a comm.</p><p>“Meteor Showa to Fifth.”</p><p>Atajo himself blipped onscreen, square-shouldered in blue armor and square-jawed with a tidy rectangular mustache plate. “Meteor! Oh wow you look like hell.”</p><p>“Don’t I know it. Ostenops is retired, the vault is… mostly okay. I need somebody to come get me ‘cause I don’t trust that elevator.”</p><p>“Roger. Sit tight. And good work.”</p><p>She looked around the room: just her, the terminals, and the desk. She smirked a little.</p><p>When South Tawaki finally arrived with a handful of local security, they found Meteor sitting behind the desk, fingers laced, battle-damaged and politely smiling.</p><p>“Welcome to the Inferno Library, how may we be of assistance?”</p><p>The recovery party burst out laughing.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:</p><p>“Human/Reploid Relations”</p><p>Humans worldwide experienced a significant cultural sense of loss with the end of androids – those robots of sufficient intelligence and emotional reasoning to pass the Light Test. The World Robotics Alliance had (with some controversy) limited an android’s term of use, and then with the death of Thomas Light, the WRA banned further android production entirely. Conservatives championed it as an advance in public safety, but the public simply missed cohabitating a world with miraculous creatures they could talk with, not merely to.</p><p>The advent of reploids was therefore celebrated by the general public. They welcomed reploids first as long-lost friends and then, over time, as legitimate cultural equals. For young people who knew no world without truly sapient artificial humanoids, “reploid” is considered simply another ethnic group, one to be embraced by the egalitarian or disdained by the bigoted. Even marriage and/or sexual relationships between humans and reploids is, while rare, not unknown, although it is still banned in certain countries. A reploid is a person, legally and ethically, though always acting under more regulations than humans.</p><p>The rise of Mavericks jeopardized this treasured relationship, but did not end it. It did, however, add a significant wrinkle: Mavericks have never lacked support from isolated human extremists.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Friends and Pranks</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meteor enjoys social time after her mission and sets up a prank for a friend.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“So after they stopped laughing about the library gag, Tawaki asked if he could check <em>me</em> out,” said Meteor as Vitamin tinkered wrist-deep in her empty shoulder socket.</p><p>“Rather bold of him,” her physician said.</p><p>“Not all South Islanders are so unprofessional,” Nouveau hastened to add, defensively, from a terminal screen by her repair slab.</p><p>“It’s fine,” said Meteor, “he read the room. He was a perfect gentleman on the way up, too. Made me think about sending him my Bustr account, but that’d come across as too flirty, don’t you think?”</p><p>“I’ll edit that remark from the record, Lieutenant,” Nouveau sighed. “And it’s none of my business, but no. Anything else to add?”</p><p>Her chatty medbay manner cooled a few degrees.</p><p>“The students are all right, aren’t they?”</p><p>“Positively,” Nouveau assured. “Several in custody, one with a Repliforce transponder on his person. Evidently he tried to form a riot march on the Biotechnics building, but the forces you sent to the rally broke it up. Good work.”</p><p>
  <em>On balance, maybe, but…</em>
</p><p>“I don’t know if I’d call it that. I’m sorry I couldn’t save more of the samples, Nou—Captain. The Knots and mechaniloids were a step ahead, but I mopped up what I could, but that just gave Freezey more time, and he crushed what I’m pretty sure was a mourning dove right in front of me. That wasn’t the last one on Earth, was it?”</p><p>“I suppose I can check.” Nouveau moved his arm, tapping something out of frame. “Captain Nouveau to Combat Analysis.”</p><p>The screen split. In the new partition Deco rolled her eyes so hard her head rocked. “Maverick Hunter Headquarters Central America Fourth Overland Unit Combat Analysis Division Officer Dec—oh! Mimi! You’re looking a bit grilled.”</p><p>“The opposite, actually,” she cringed as Vitamin scraped around in her insides. “Did your office run a postmortem on the vault yet?”</p><p>“Sure did,” Deco bobbed a quick nod. “Full inventory was finished just a minute ago, in fact. It lost a lot of petabytes worth of genomic recon data—” Meteor groaned— “but there are backups for most of it. The hard samples took a hit—” Meteor groaned louder— “but not a big one. Only a couple of the archive halls had serious damage, and none were a total writeoff. My best ballistics guy wrote that you did everything in your power to protect the capsules, and from the scans he sent, I trust him. Don’t think I didn’t notice the shot grouping or the finger marks in one of your Mav’s bone fan dealies.”</p><p>“Nothing gets by you, does it?” Meteor grinned, which became a grimace as Vitamin scraped out more cryomer residue.</p><p>“Not a bit, fellow ell-tee. There was a signal jammer down there too, hidden in a wall. We even reconstructed some data Repliforce left behind, but all my analysts caught was a reference to a ‘Lieutenant Carat-Three’ and a ‘Captain Ten.’”</p><p>
  <em>Ten. Decim. Great. But more importantly…</em>
</p><p>“That mourning dove. Was it the last one?”</p><p>Deco’s at-work professionalism flickered. “I’m sorry, but yes. We did recover the head and several feathers, though. And some of the animals in even the destroyed capsules left enough behind that the university could recover their specific genome. Less is lost than you might fear. I find that’s often the case.”</p><p><em>Of course she’d find it that way.</em> For a second Meteor almost resented her positive outlook, but that way lay the worst of Skittle’s attitude, so she left it alone and took comfort in what positive work she did.</p><p>Little of that got conveyed in her “Thank you.”</p><p>Deco smiled anyway. “I’ll square things away with my guys, finish up here and see you outside the Hour later on, that sound good?”</p><p>“Sure. Where are you anyway?”</p><p>“Mazar-i-Sharif,” Nouveau interrupted. “The Addis Ababa Fourth was at capacity. She acquitted herself quite well against an energen smuggler, as I knew she would.”</p><p>Deco shook her head in a very sisterly way. “What he said. Take care Mimi.”</p><p>“Oh, before you go?”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“My sabers need names, what’s a good one?”</p><p>“Ooh,” Deco rubbed her jawline, suddenly focused, “now naming a weapon isn’t something you just do on a whim…”</p><p>“Socializing is not the purpose of this call, sister,” Nouveau’s elegant eyebrows crammed together.</p><p>“You could name ‘em the Grumpy Little Brother, the Blonde Dramaqueen…”</p><p>“<em>Thank</em> you Lieutenants,” Nouveau removed Deco’s side of the screen as she finger-wiggled a goodbye wave. “Bee-twelve?”</p><p>“Yes Captain?” Vitamin replied without looking up.</p><p>“Give me an estimate as to when Lieutenant Showa will be ready for the field again.”</p><p>Vitamin moved to Meteor’s disembodied arm and tooled with the shoulder link. “Eighteen, twenty hours.”</p><p>“Good. Out.” Nouveau’s face blipped away.</p><p>“I’m not <em>that</em> banged-up, am I?” Asked Meteor.</p><p>Her dismounted arm sparked and its fingers moved on their own. “Yes. But the worst part was the stress to your cell. Small injuries add and add, especially with your reduced frame. You need to be more careful.”</p><p>
  <em>He’s right. I can’t eat attrition for breakfast anymore.</em>
</p><p>“Sorry.”</p><p>“You’ve done nothing wrong, ma’am.”</p><p>“Thanks. You’ve got a really good bedside manner, you know that?”</p><p>“It’s ‘cause he’s seen ‘em die lefty-righty since Sigma,” singsonged the resident fairy, flitting right in. “Practice makes perfect, eh? Eh?” They elbowed the Lifesaver. “At least she’s got a head on, right? You seen a lot worse than her, eh?”</p><p>“Yes, Your Highness,” Vitamin replied with restrained pleasantness.</p><p>“Dial the grim back, Skittle,” scolded Meteor, “it’s not funny.”</p><p>“Fine, whatevers, but check this out.” They flicked her a datapad. It skipped across her slab, but she caught it before it fell off. “Gotcher payday queued up.”</p><p>#</p><p>MISSION</p><p>C O M P L E T E</p><p> </p><p>- B-Rank Mission Parameters Complete: 25,000z</p><p>- Repliforce Cell Neutralized: 5,000z</p><p>- Substantial Preservation of Scientific Asset: 7,500z</p><p>- Donation of Gratitude, University of Larsen: 1,500z</p><p>- Donation of Gratitude, Larsen City Council: 1,000z</p><p> </p><p>TOTAL: 40,000z</p><p>#</p><p>Forty thousand zenny was about what a human office manager made in a year. Meteor had made it in a matter of hours. Maverick Hunters knew very well the value and hazards of their operatives’ work.</p><p>“You keep raking it in and I’ll have to think up some new toys, I will.”</p><p>“Any old toys ready?”</p><p>“Not yet, your Mav’s DNA’s held up in processing. Plus I’ve got some more prep to do. I’ll tell you when it’s done.” They flitted away, saluting.</p><p>She watched them go. Vitamin remounted her arm.</p><p>“Does Skittle bother you much?” She asked.</p><p>“A little, but that’s just their way.”</p><p>“If <em>their way</em> is giving you grief, I can make them stop.”</p><p>“It’s not a problem, Lieutenant, genuinely. Bother is not the same as annoy, which is not the same as irritate, which is not the same as aggrieve. Warrant Officer Seelie bothers out of respect. Their…” he ellipsed longer than necessary, “<em>unique</em> expressiveness is just down to their personality. Such people talk as a show of friendship, even in unpleasant ways. I would feel more affronted if they ignored me outright.”</p><p>Meteor could kind of see his point.</p><p>“You’re a good person, Vitamin.”</p><p>“I appreciate that, ma’am.”</p><p>In due course he finished up, quick-charged her shield battery and prescribed hours of socializing and rest.</p><p>She knew just where to go.</p><p>#</p><p>The Eighth Hour bustled so boisterously that the rumbling of the underground truck ramp next door went unnoticed. Maverick Hunter bars came in all shapes and sizes and themes; the Hour’s was kitted like a sports bar with an Aztec aesthetic, its design ordered by the Veracruz 4<sup>th</sup>’s late commander Earthquake Jaguar. The monitors played soccer (Spanish subtitled) and basketball (Mandarin subtitled) while one particularly raucous corner watched cricket (Hindi subtitled). No news was ever on the screens. News existed in plentiful supply outside or on personal connections. The Hour was for the 4<sup>th</sup> Overland Unit to unwind.</p><p>Volt Batteram leaned his bulky elbow on the bar, watching basketball – the Foshan Towers against the Oklahoma City Thunder. The legs of his stool were zigzagged like a step pyramid.</p><p>“Hey Volt,” Meteor stepped up.</p><p>The big blue ram raised a wine glass by way of greeting.</p><p>“Who you watching, Suzhou?”</p><p>He tossed her a workplace glare.</p><p>“Just kidding.”</p><p>“Mm.”</p><p>“Foshan’s new center’s worth the transfer, huh?”</p><p>“Mm.” He sipped his dark red whatever-it-was, surprisingly daintily for a seven-foot brawler. His knuckles were segmented with shallow rings instead of seams, a design element conveying his strength.</p><p>“So, how’s your day been? We haven’t really caught up since I got back.”</p><p>“Cop-killer in Baja,” he replied. “No sweat.”</p><p>“Cool, cool. Hey Brav,” she knocked on the bar, “I’ll have what he’s having.”</p><p>“He’s having the last of the twenty-sixty meritage, sorry,” said Bravo Four, the Standard Beret bartender. The seam around his artificial hair betrayed where the factory model peak-cap helmet once sat. The seam around his jaw betrayed where the beard-plate once hung. Repliforce had no monopoly on his model, but a certain stigma came with the obvious signifiers of the line that filled the Repliforce officer ranks. If his luck had been different…</p><p>“Fine,” Meteor stopped her train of thought right there, “daiquiri me.”</p><p>Volt snorted a chuckle.</p><p>“What?” She jabbed him, grinning. “Surely that wasn’t an aspersion you just snorted, Mister Wine Snob?”</p><p>“It’s not snobbery,” his stone face cracked under a smirk, “it’s respect for craftsmanship.”</p><p>“You want to talk about craftsmanship, you should sit down with Skittle.”</p><p>“I <em>did</em>. And I thought you and Deco never shut up.”</p><p>“It’s called being social. <em>Sooo-shull.</em> You oughta try it more, you’re like the stiffest electric-type I know.”</p><p>“Mm.”</p><p>“<em>Mm</em>,” she teased. “You do anything fun while I was knocked out?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Oh come on! Nothing?”</p><p>“Logistics.”</p><p><em>Figures</em>. He was the lead officer for that department in the unit… by choice, astonishingly. It was thankless work, most of the time.</p><p>“Thanks for keeping us running.”</p><p>His expression softened a little more. “Your repairs cost a fortune, didn’t they.”</p><p>“Yeah, my whole piggy bank.”</p><p>“Not everybody saves up.” He sipped. “Calavera didn’t.”</p><p>Meteor watched him. Marvel Calavera had been her predecessor in the unit – another heat-type. Years ago, she too had been thrashed beyond as-was repair, but being unable to fund her way back to fighting shape, she was honorably discharged and Meteor was shuffled in to replace her. She worked in Mexico City as a civic event organizer and pyrotechnics engineer, last Meteor heard.</p><p>“Makes me wonder,” Volt continued after a moment.</p><p>“About what?” Meteor pried the crack in his rock face.</p><p>“Where the Hunters are going. We weren’t intended to do as much as we do. We keep taking on tasks. We set up an army to share the load. Now they <em>are</em> the load.” He sipped again, swirled his glass. “Just gotta keep lifting, don’t we.”</p><p>“Lift and carry,” sighed Meteor. “Uphill. With people shooting at you.”</p><p>“Mm.”</p><p>Meteor’s nanite-infused pink-as-heck strawberry daiquiri came in a frilly glass with sugar on the rim. Bravo knew her well.</p><p>Volt held out his glass, inviting a tap. She obliged him.</p><p>“To getting back at it,” he offered.</p><p>“Kanpai.”</p><p>They sipped in tandem.</p><p>The basketball game went well for the Chinese team. Meteor didn’t really have a preference when it came to sports, but she liked that other people liked them. Besides, watching a lot of running and jumping in a non-lethal format took the edge off her recent experience, which was rather the point of all the game monitors. At length Volt chuckled openly at a good maneuver, which for him qualified as standing up and whooping.</p><p>Meteor headed out after the quarter was done, sliding back her empty glass and clapping Volt on the shoulder in farewell.</p><p>“Good to see you again, ma’am,” Bravo nodded.</p><p>“Mm,” she grunted. Volt playfully flicked her hand off him.</p><p>The hall from the bar to the Courtyard was a slope, decidedly Decoless. Meteor checked the time as she passed an intersection. <em>Past six, Deco’s gotta be done by now…</em></p><p>She emerged into the Courtyard and saw just how done she was.</p><p>Three Sky Claw mechaniloids held up a banner, a legitimate cloth banner, reading “WELCOME BACK MIMI” printed among koi… and on the back, “WE ALL LOVE YOU” printed among sushi rolls. The helicoptering pincers hovered just below the skywalk observation deck and pivoted in a slow circle. A fourth and fifth Sky Claw followed the pivot around just to shine spotlights on it.</p><p>Meteor ran her hand down her face to hide her broadening smile. The ghost of the daiquiri spoke to her.</p><p>
  <em>Oh she’s not getting off easy from this.</em>
</p><p>She opened a link to the nuclear option and mentally texted them a single sentence.</p><p>{I need to prank somebody.}</p><p>Skittle replied immediately on an audio channel.</p><p>“Who is this and why is she suddenly cool.”</p><p>“Hush. Did you see that banner right in the middle of the Courtyard?”</p><p>“Yeah, Gatsby McHappyface had it put up.” They paused. “<em>Please let me prankback</em>. She’ll never do anything like it again! She’ll <em>shudder</em> at the thought of glitter! I can make her see in kaleidoscope vision for a <em>week!”</em></p><p>“That’s… kind of a big escalation of hostilities for a mild embarrassment from silliness.”</p><p>“Hey, go big or go home.”</p><p>“Well, ‘going big’ was more in line with my idea.”</p><p>“What’s this! Meteor Showa acting inefficiently?”</p><p>“Shut up, I’m allowed one. Now listen…”</p><p>#</p><p>The streamlined Howlite-model quartermaster looked up from the datapad.</p><p>“This is highly unorthodox,” he said, his accent faintly Canadian.</p><p>“C’mon, Windsor,” Meteor wrapped an arm around the smaller, flight-type reploid’s shoulder, “it won’t even leave campus airspace.”</p><p>“Say hey,” Skittle flitted sideways up to his other shoulder, “where’d Miss Congeniality get those Sky Claws from, I wonder?”</p><p>Meteor’s smile went a little too wide. “She wouldn’t have <em>promised</em> you anything, would she?”</p><p>Skittle opened their hand and projected from their palm a dark-skinned human pop idol in a hugely frilly dress. “Like more interactive holos of her ex?”</p><p>Windsor wasn’t paid enough for this.</p><p>#</p><p>Not long before midnight, a few enlisted hung out up in the observation deck where the skywalks intersected. The hour was irrelevant. Consistent operation without stressing the LIFE cell was what the “fuel tank” of all reploid anatomy was <em>for</em>, and regular brain maintenance only required about one hour out of thirty spent unconscious. The regulars of the Maverick Hunters could therefore be found almost anywhere on the base at almost any time.</p><p>Meteor joined them, another daiquiri deep, with Deco tagging along.</p><p>“You really took it down?” Deco pouted. “I know Brother wouldn’t mind, it wasn’t blocking anything!”</p><p>“I kept the banner in storage, don’t worry,” Meteor flapped a hand, “I just wanted to thank you for the… <em>exuberant</em>… show of friendship.”</p><p>“Aw, it’s nothing!”</p><p>“Right, and it’s a <em>nothing</em> you do for everybody. But I thought, who does it for you? It’s about time you got to experience just how it feels to be Deco’d.” She tapped her earcap. “She’s here, hit it.”</p><p>Deco cocked her head. A blue-armored regular at a bench pointed something out to his benchmate.</p><p>“Hey, you see that?”</p><p>Meteor grinned. Deco put two and two together and hurried to a window.</p><p>A Bee Blader, the huge Deerball-carrying anti-ground support mechaniloid model that the Hunters always kept in service, shined half a dozen active spotlights from its underbelly as it descended to the Courtyard. A lone Sky Claw pulled a giant ribbon out of its stinger port, then more Sky Claws flew in to pinch the ribbon and support it as it unfurled. Like an antique stock-ticker, a message stretched out, curling around and around the observation deck, written out in exceedingly sparkly bold font.</p><p>
  <strong>WELCOME BACK FROM YOUR MISSION, DECO! HOW ARE YOU? I’M DOING FINE! I’M DOING SO FINE, IN FACT, I FEEL THAT I SHOULD TELL ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE I LOVE MY FRIENDS UP TO AND INCLUDING YOU IN THE FORM OF A TOTALLY-NOT-DISTRACTING RECITAL OF ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE BOOKS!</strong>
</p><p>Deco squinted as she read, silently spreading a giant open-mouthed smile.</p><p>
  <strong>WHEN MISTER BILBO BAGGINS OF BAG END ANNOUNCED THAT HE WOULD SHORTLY BE CELEBRATING HIS ELEVENTY-FIRST</strong>
</p><p>Deco giddily shrieked and doubled over laughing. Meteor smiled and tucked in her lower lip.</p><p>“Oh <em>wow</em>, Mimi, this is really… um…”</p><p>
  <strong>AND AS MISTER BAGGINS WAS GENEROUS WITH HIS MONEY, MOST PEOPLE WERE WILLING TO FORGIVE HIM HIS ODDITIES AND HIS GOOD FORTUNE</strong>
</p><p>“Is… is this the whole first chapter?”</p><p>“It’s the whole book.”</p><p>Deco bent over laughing again.</p><p>“What’s so funny?” Meteor patted her back. “It’s just enthusiasm!”</p><p>Out and out the ribbon scrolled, faster and faster. After a certain length it sagged and draped over the windows. Repeatedly. The Sky Claw team looped it around a skybridge, over another, wrapping and weaving…</p><p>Deco recovered herself and watched the literary drapery grow.</p><p>“Is this really how I come off?”</p><p>“A little,” Meteor patted her arm. “But you wouldn’t be you if you didn’t. You just have that much force of personality, and if somebody doesn’t ever like making a huge, y’know, <em>deal</em> out of themselves… the silliness can be a little awkward. Understand?”</p><p>Deco sighed, not in humility but cheerful disappointment. “Well, shoot. Guess I’ll have to keep the banners indoors from now on.”</p><p>“I think the whole base would appreciate that. I still remember the streamers you stuck everywhere for Turtle’s birthday. We were fishing them out of the Gulf for weeks.”</p><p>“Look at all this,” Deco conspiratorially smiled behind her hand. “Brother’s going to be so upset.”</p><p>“Maybe,” Meteor shrugged. “It’ll be easy to take down. And recyclable besides.”</p><p>They watched the ribbon gradually mummify the observation deck dome. Part of the opening lines lay wrinkled on the windows underneath all the rest: <strong>TELL ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE I LOVE MY FRIENDS.</strong></p><p>“Uh, Meteor?” Skittle commed.</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“The printer’s overheating. I don’t think my glitter’s compatible with it after all.”</p><p>“Is that bad?”</p><p>“It’s throwing out hot sparks and I set the matrix to fab a lot of polyethylene in the fibers.”</p><p>“Um.”</p><p>Flames roared outside. The wrapping started to char, then really found its motivation and flashed ablaze. The date-night normals whooped and applauded the spectacle.</p><p>Meteor and Deco shared a wince.</p><p>Turtle commed in Meteor’s ear. She winced harder.</p><p>“Condense your apology into twenty words or less before you march yourself into my office, Lieutenant.”</p><p>
  <em>Heck.</em>
</p><p>#</p><p>Meteor’s day off became a night on. And then a morning.</p><p>Turtle laid down the order for Meteor, Skittle, and Windsor to scrape and recycle every square centimeter of the charry goopy remains of ribbon off the Courtyard. Getting the mass off was still easier than scraping off the baked-in lettering. Meteor was still up there on her hands and knees with a diamond sander well into the morning, long enough for absolutely everyone on base to have gotten a chance to see her. Climbing to everywhere that needed cleaning involved electromagnetic grips.</p><p>
  <em>So much for avoiding embarrassment.</em>
</p><p>She had progressed to where the ribbon began, every abrasion-proof window clear enough for a show floor except the dome, when she heard a tune played on harmonica. Skittle fluttered upside-down, compressing the smallest accordion she’d ever seen.</p><p>“So what’re you in for?” They ask.</p><p>“Being dumb for fun.” Meteor resumed sanding.</p><p>“Want something to pass the time, now that it’s mostly past already? I’ve got your upgrades lined up.”</p><p>“Sure. Let’s have it.”</p><p>They stowed the instrument behind their back and rotated upright. “Got some new tools in. You’re gonna love this, you are! Get emulator rights to DNA with a nice hard element in it and I can bend the regs to copy that element into a saber.”</p><p>Meteor ground out the word <em>wizard</em> baked onto the dome. “Element?”</p><p>“Yeah, saber tech exploded just in the last year. Fire sabers, ice sabers, it’s <em>nuts</em>. It’s even possible to just stack and stack WEAPON data into one hilt, but that sort of thing would cost way more than you’d want to put in, and frankly you’re not of a properly meleé-ey disposition to even use a Variable Saber the right way.”</p><p>“That’s fair.”</p><p>“I mean I’ve seen you, you swing ‘em like bowling pins.”</p><p>“Okay that’s less fair. So what are my options?”</p><p>Skittle sent her the list, mind to mind. Meteor opened it in her heads-up display, the rest of her busy with manual labor.</p><p>#</p><p>&gt; VWES Options:</p><p>Bit of a snag. This is all cold-weapon tech, and you aren’t. It’ll take more energy per shot, so make ‘em count, yeah?</p><p>“Fluid Lockdown” – Shoots a cohesive mid-range jet of liquid cryomer compound that oozes to a minimum thickness and sticks in place. Deals low-temp damage over several seconds and has zero friction when it dries. 6 shots.</p><p>“Cryosol Spray” – Just the Lockdown but an aerosol, the kind he breathed at you. Sims suggest it’ll come out like a muzzle flash of fog. Does the same damage, but closer range, and faster, for the surface area of all the particulates. 6 shots.</p><p>“Fan Cooling” – Fires a pair of small, spade-shaped satellite bits which sandwich the nearest hostile and snap-freeze the space between. Better compatibility with your systems gives you 10 shots, but the damage is lesser, <em>but</em> they’ll just float and follow like your old fish drones did.</p><p>&gt; You Specifically:</p><p>“Meteor Rocket” – That option you wanted. Charge up your Melter to a second stage and you can spit your grenade as a missile. It’ll go straight forward, so aim careful, like. 20,000z.</p><p>&gt; Other Thingies:</p><p>“Saber Nonsense” – What it says on the tin. I can get you a full length on the lo-beam for 5,000z and/or uptune it to a hi-beam for the same price. And on either one I can stick…</p><p>“Fire Element” – High-temp combustion envelope for when plasma alone just isn’t the right <em>kind</em> of hot.</p><p>… or…</p><p>“Ice Element” – More complicated, but basically it’ll fill the EM envelope with liquid cryomer ‘til you hit something with it, and <em>then</em> click on the plasma. Means a <em>nasty</em> one-two thermal shear, even worse if your target doesn’t like cold.</p><p>… for 10,000z each. One per, of course.</p><p>It’s a matter of parts and regs, not labor. Sorry.</p><p>#</p><p>Meteor hummed in thought. Her hum went on a while and bounced a tune before she cut it off.</p><p>“Okay. Fluid Lockdown, rocket, and top off the length on the short saber.”</p><p>“Got it. Fifteen-kay left, then. Save or spend?”</p><p>She tilted her head back and forth, agonizing. “Nnn, I’d better save, that frame upgrade saved me a lot of hurt…”</p><p>“Is that doubt I hear swimming in?”</p><p>“No,” she set her lips in a line. “No, I’m good with saving.”</p><p>“Righty-o. Think I’ll flit off to get it prepped.”</p><p>“Thanks. I won’t be long.”</p><p>Skittle three-finger-saluted and flew off.</p><p>Meteor powered up her sander and climbed down, grinding off layers of words… when she came across part of the introduction. She jutted out her lower lip, furtively glancing for work monitors. The loungers inside the dome had long since stopped paying attention to her. She applied some selective abrasion.</p><p>When she was done, every word was gone except for a few, resting in the middle at a slight diagonal:</p><p>
  <strong>I LOVE MY FRIENDS</strong>
</p><p>… Though from her perspective it was spelled backwards.</p><p>A tapping from inside made her look down. Nouveau rapped on the nigh-invincible glass with the backs of his knuckles. When he was confident she was looking, he touched his pointed earcap.</p><p>“Lieutenant.”</p><p>“Captain. Back from Rio?”</p><p>“Clearly. I just wanted to congratulate you. It seems you’ve finally gotten through to my sister.”</p><p>“Is that right?”</p><p>“She promised to give you – you, solely – slightly less public shows of appreciation. On a related note, she has filled your room with party balloons. Also, the next time you prank someone? Make less of a mess.”</p><p>“Copy. I guess I’ll just, um, finish sanding this…”</p><p>“Leave it, Lieutenant,” he raised a hand. “Harmless positivity against the sky. Call it aesthetic.”</p><p>“Yes sir.” She started climbing back up, but a thought hit her. “Oh, one thing?”</p><p>“Speak freely, Showa,” Nouveau smirked, enjoying pulling rank a bit too much.</p><p>“I’ve been meaning to ask, but why is it that you and your sister got to stay in the same unit? I mean, I’ve got a brother in Geneva Eighth and a brother in Tokyo Sixteenth, and I hardly ever see them. My sister’s even on-campus, but Second keeps her afield all the time.”</p><p>Nouveau fastidiously brushed dust off his forearm. “Simple. Deco and I were deemed insufficiently threatening if we ever defected together. Our abilities don’t synergize well; all my gravitics tend to foul the trajectory of her solids.”</p><p>“Ah. I’ve always wondered.”</p><p>“It never hurts to ask, Lieutenant. Next time you want to jibe her, come to me and not that mad fairy or our poor Canadian.”</p><p>“Will do.”</p><p>She climbed up and treaded a skybridge roof all the way to the roof of the equipment building.</p><p>There was once a time when she spent at least an hour every day in the Requisitions department, checking out the new gear, asking everyone where things might be improved, and professionally quibbling with Windsor and his team over specifications. She hadn’t had the chance to since the war started. She dropped off the climb-pads and grinder in a supply room and nearly bumped into the quartermaster on her way out.</p><p>“Oh! Sorry,” she said. “Hey, how much do I owe you for…?”</p><p>“For the comedic boost to morale?” Windsor side-smirked. “Nothing. I covered it.”</p><p>“You shouldn’t have, I’m not broke anymore.”</p><p>“You paid your share in labor, Showa. And in giving the regulars a laugh. They’re still coming off of their first major war, remember. Trust me when I say you’ve done a service. Now if you’ll pardon me, I have inventory to do…”</p><p>Meteor made her way out and over to the medical wing for her upgrades. She took the skybridge route, just for fun.</p><p>A small group of Cabochon-series regulars had already assembled in the dome just underneath Meteor’s amicable declaration. The regulars of land, sea, and air fussed into position before a hovering camera.</p><p>“All right!” A blue one, a Larimar male-type, shouted to the rest. “Everybody say ‘Screw the Mavericks!’”</p><p>“<em>Screw the Mavericks!</em>” The group cheerily shouted.</p><p>Meteor moved on, well reminded of the value of occasional silliness.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:</p><p>“Liquid Induction”</p><p>Trivial installation of certain sensors in the mouth allows reploids to taste liquids, which molecular vaporizers then destroy and harmlessly vent. Although they cannot metabolize and thus derive no energy from drinks, reploids can theoretically drink anything a human can. Some connoisseurs, lacking human organs to destroy, espouse the flavors found in mechanical lubricants and household solvents. Others stick to fruit juice or alcoholic beverages.</p><p>Recreational intoxication in reploids requires an infusion of specialized nanomachines in the drink. The reactions are similar to human drunkenness: impaired neurological function, sensory alteration, and/or general euphoria. The nanomachines are naturally destroyed over a period of hours by the body’s own self-maintenance cycle – or, for faster sobriety, flushed clean in seconds by an uncomfortable ferrofluid treatment.</p><p>Reploids’ capacity for drinking has led to some misconceptions. A famous film dramatizing the events of the Maverick War depicted X encountering Vile seated at a bar in an abandoned town. In one particularly iconic sequence, the actor portraying Vile examined a shot glass full of bourbon and remarked that combat reploids could not tell the difference between bourbon and mud. After humans began to take the scene at face value, the screenwriter clarified that the line was metaphorical.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. The Regulars</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meteor visits her old staff, fights in the sims -- against data for Zero and a prior Maverick -- and confronts a friend about treatment of lower-rank Hunters.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Maverick hunting required more work than merely seeking and destroying. Every unit had less glamorous jobs that needed filling, from maintenance to running drills to coordinating with other units. “Field officers” such as Meteor – those who were assigned to actually hunt down and retire specific Mavericks – were encouraged but not required to take administrative responsibilities in their down time.</p>
<p>Meteor relished the extra work. Losing her right to it, and for good cause, was a discouragement she’d hoped to numb by field work. Finding herself half done with her ten-day roster on day two only reminded her of the additional work she no longer had, especially when she was on medical orders to chill for another half a day.</p>
<p>Her weapons were upgraded, her health was full, her inbox was empty, she’d re-reviewed her remaining roster, the bar wasn’t open yet, the new season of <em>Transformers</em> was delayed because of an actor strike, and no one was asking her to do anything. It was agonizing.</p>
<p>And so Meteor Showa headed to her old department in the administration building.</p>
<p>The command room lay in the secure central floor; Meteor’s elevator didn’t even have a digit for it. It took her to the top floor and she walked the rest of the way.</p>
<p>The Decommissions office was a single small open-floor-plan room where four reploids manned the desk terminals with the focus of salaryman accountants. All four of them were Standard Berets: two clean-“shaven” male-types like Bravo the bartender, and two female-types in narrow-paneled skirts. All were brown-haired and absolutely none of them wore hats, to further distance themselves from the silhouette of Repliforce’s soldiers. Their armor colors matched the sky-blue, yellow, and orange of the Maverick Hunter insignia perfectly, as if to drive the point home.</p>
<p>One of the men, Golf Nine, rose quickly from a desk at the back and greeted Meteor somewhat sheepishly. “Captain! Oh, sorry, Lieutenant. Ranks move fast, heh. Welcome back!” His dialect was as flat and unthreatening as the American Midwest.</p>
<p>“It’s fine,” Meteor reassured him. “How’s the office been treating everyone?”</p>
<p>“Tough, ma’am,” said Frambuesa, a short-haired female-type reading over a financial report.</p>
<p>“Really miss the hours you gave us,” concurred her seat neighbor, a longer-haired female-type named Albahaca. Both were Veracruz locals and colored their Hunter-standard English appropriately.</p>
<p>Golf ran a hand through his short brown artificial hair. “Yeah, Oversight’s been stuck on my eyelids for a week, making sure there’s not another mistake—uh, all due respect of course.”</p>
<p>“Of course,” Meteor nodded. “I mean, honestly, I really deserved it when I…”</p>
<p>She stopped herself, reading Golf’s expression like a book. Meteor, after all, was responsible for glutting the Fourth with his model line, a ridiculous ratio of whom thought it would be a great idea to join Repliforce. Every Standard Beret who hadn’t defected had to prove their loyalty daily if not hourly.</p>
<p>“… Decommed our ride-armor fleet,” she finished.</p>
<p>Golf’s mouth smiled but his eyes didn’t. “Yes ma’am. We’re holding up, though.”</p>
<p>“If you call working your hands off ‘up,’ sure,” complained Hotel Two, the other male-type, identical in voice. “Alba’s right, I could really use some of those four-hour days back. How’d you do it for so long, ma’am?”</p>
<p>Meteor shrugged. “It’s basically just accounting plus gardening. Check status, trim this, promote growth in that, approve or deny keeping things. I guess I just liked it.”</p>
<p>“Tal vez nos guste de nuevo cuando Repliforce esté jodidamente muerta,” Frambuesa grouched.</p>
<p>“Oh, Raspberry…” Albahaca sighed.</p>
<p>“Don’t even pretend, hon,” Frambuesa went on. “<em>We</em> look like <em>them</em>, so <em>we</em> get the shit work. And what the hell are we gonna do? Huh? Say no? Get called Mavericks for working eight hours and not ten?”</p>
<p>The air seemed to thicken.</p>
<p>“So, uh, Showa ma’am,” Golf anxiously rubbed behind his head, “any chance of you working back up to department head? I’d be glad to hand it back.”</p>
<p>“I—”</p>
<p>“Oh hell no,” Frambuesa threw her hands up, “never gonna happen, can’t have the nice one in charge of us Mavericks! What <em>will</em> they say.”</p>
<p>Albahaca shot her a look. Frambuesa froze before sullenly crossing her arms. Meteor could guess at the text that passed between them.</p>
<p>“They’ll probably put more eyes on me,” Meteor admitted. “I already have a handler from Sixteenth, you know. Internals might even write a nasty letter about me coming here. But I wanted to anyway, because I like all of you.”</p>
<p>“Then can you maybe put in a word about the backlog?” Golf hoped. “I mean, really, they’ve moved some of Sixth’s cross-checks into our queue like we’re interns. The other day they had us clear funding requests that Logistics really should’ve handled. Who has time for that?”</p>
<p>“Her, almost,” Hotel muttered.</p>
<p>“Who?” Meteor asked.</p>
<p>The air went from thick to gone. The four of them looked at her for an instant, then back at their monitors.</p>
<p>“Guys?”</p>
<p>Frambuesa cut the tension with a backhanded slap of her terminal. “You were on our list, ma’am. You. You were so broken, Commander Jaguar wanted us to decommission you, send you home with honors after Sixteenth was done with you. Five hours later he fell to Colonel. Chain of command bumped Turtle up and she cancelled the order. ‘Cause she had faith in you.”</p>
<p>“Like we do,” said Albahaca.</p>
<p>“I might’ve gotten loud about it,” said Hotel. “How you’ve never treated us like flight risks.”</p>
<p>“It’s always been appreciated,” Golf meekly nodded.</p>
<p>Meteor let that sink in, build up, heat up…</p>
<p><em>They almost sent me home. There’s nothing to </em>do<em> there.</em></p>
<p>… Then she let it flow out.</p>
<p><em>Almost. I’m still here, darn it</em>.</p>
<p>“Thank you,” said Meteor. “I can’t promise anything, guys, but I’ll put a word in about the workload. I know the Logistics officer pretty well.”</p>
<p>“Sure, do whatever,” said Frambuesa. “Just don’t be surprised if you get court-martialed for it.”</p>
<p>“What my wife means to say is <em>thank you</em>,” Albahaca pointedly corrected.</p>
<p>“Thank you,” Frambuesa muttered.</p>
<p>“Yeah, thanks a lot, ma’am,” Golf smiled and bowed twice. “We should, um, get back to it…”</p>
<p>“Right. Good to see you all.”</p>
<p>The room muttered assent. Meteor headed out.</p>
<p>Fortunately she knew just the place to work out some feelings.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>The administrative tower took up a corner of the 4<sup>th</sup> Unit’s share of the headquarters and anchored one arm of the skybridge over the Courtyard. The medical building continued counter-clockwise along the six-lane border with the 6<sup>th</sup> Unit’s waterfront share of the sprawling campus. The Residential wing, divided below by the roads that ran through it, took the next corner and tower and bordered the Utilities building. On the opposite side across the Courtyard lay the Equipment and Maintenance buildings under their rooftop hangars. They abutted HQ2’s <em>other</em> six-lane artery – across which lay the bigger, busier home of the base’s 3<sup>rd</sup> Deploy Unit – and extended some distance underground past the Eighth Hour bar.</p>
<p>Everything else – the entire southwest side of the Veracruz 4<sup>th</sup> Overland’s real estate – was given over to the training building. Those who served there fondly called it the Wall. Its huge, heavily-armored interior space served as an all-year all-weather training ground for drills and live-fire practice scenarios when outdoor proving grounds were booked and sims just couldn’t suffice.</p>
<p>The much more casual practice area lay in the comparatively small yet still cavernous ground-floor room closest to the Residential wing – the Racks.</p>
<p>Meteor walked in and bee-lined for the shooting ranges, the Hot Racks.</p>
<p>She booked a lane with the desk operator, a Disk Boy reploid named Thompson, and stepped into place. A fabricator in the ceiling generated mobile targets at the far end: a bunch of bland hard circles that bounced off the hard edges of the floor and the thin yet nigh-invincible ceratanium shock barriers reaching all the way to the ceiling.</p>
<p>She charged up her throat and introduced the targets to her new rocket-propelled thermite grenade. The distance and velocity were remarkable improvements over simple lobbing. In no time at all the far end of the lane was awash in scrap and cooling thermite.</p>
<p>“Nice thrust on that grenade,” said a gruff female voice. “Straight as a pin.”</p>
<p>Meteor looked aside – and down – at Flurry, the Rangemaster and the only Snow Rider in HQ2. Her stocky, energy-efficient model was designed for climates about as far away from Veracruz as could be found.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” said Meteor, “just got it upgraded.”</p>
<p>“And you didn’t go straight to the sims?” Flurry’s solid yellow cyclops eye went half-lidded over her featureless faceplate.</p>
<p>“I was thinking about it, actually.”</p>
<p>“Then stop thinking and do. C’mere.”</p>
<p>The out-of-place reploid led Meteor through a safety door and into the Sim Racks. It was a long room full of suspension capsules of all sizes, mostly unoccupied but for a few regulars. Holo-screens beamed out of those who wished to share their progress. At the moment, only one did; a Chrysoprase watched his identical friend run a course of mechaniloid-infested platforms.</p>
<p>“I run the sims now too,” said Flurry.</p>
<p>“Oh?”</p>
<p>Flurry’s shoulders barely cleared the main terminal. She swiftly keyed in commands. “Yeah, Torno got whacked by a stray missile out in the Wall. Lazy chunk got bumped to a desk in Public Relations this morning. Maybe now I can keep this damn thing updated. What’ll it be, pod, private room?”</p>
<p>“Just a pod, duel mode.”</p>
<p>“Can do.” Flurry cued up a ring of eight headshots around a central square on the selection monitor. She grunted as she saw them. “Ugh, <em>still</em> on this?”</p>
<p>“Huh?” Meteor looked closer.</p>
<p>The first face she saw in miniature was her own. Volt was there too, and Deco, and Nouveau. The other four, Meteor knew, were the heaviest hitters of the local 6<sup>th</sup> minus their commander.</p>
<p>It came as a shock. Combat data of active Hunters not named X or Zero was supposed to be archived, not in sims. The rule was years old.</p>
<p>Flurry read her face. “Halcyon’s idea. Part of a trial period, lasted all of ten hours before the outcry from basically every unit commander shut it down. Or was <em>supposed</em> to be shut down if Torno did his job.”</p>
<p>Meteor scowled. “What excuse did Halcyon give?”</p>
<p>“You can guess.”</p>
<p>“No, I wanna hear it.”</p>
<p>“Bastard said it was ‘a legitimate avenue of training in the event of personnel defection.’”</p>
<p>Meteor looked at her own mugshot. “You mean ‘train against sims of your friends in case you have to retire them someday.’”</p>
<p>“Ding.”</p>
<p>“You try it?”</p>
<p>“Nah. S’rude. Besides, if I want a good humbling I’ll just fight a legend.”</p>
<p>Flurry keyed a few more commands. The mugshots winked out, replaced with a selection between X and Zero.</p>
<p>“You up for a humbling?” Flurry contrived to wink with only one eye.</p>
<p>Meteor thought about tactics, testing, areas of non-expertise…</p>
<p>“Sure. Set me up with Zero.”</p>
<p>Flurry laughed, her eye smiling for the face that couldn’t. “Girl, if I could do that I’d keep him for me.”</p>
<p>“You know what I mean,” Meteor rolled her eyes. “Guy like that, he’s probably taken already.”</p>
<p>Flurry made an inward hissing sound. Her eye became a hyphen.</p>
<p>Meteor blinked. “What?”</p>
<p>“Nothing. Activating sim for pod four. Good luck.”</p>
<p>The sim pod swished open. Meteor stepped inside and lay back.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>In the space of a blink she found herself upright in a derelict industrial corridor. Modern Cyberspace integration made the transition seamless. The silhouette of the legendary Red Reploid walked toward her, all in shadow from the unclear light source behind him. As he got closer, some sort of hatch shut, plunging the space into lower contrast from soft lights in the ceiling. Zero reached behind his back and settled into a ready stance.</p>
<p>She reached for her main saber—</p>
<p>He was already moving, a full-ahead dash.</p>
<p>
  <em>Oh come on!</em>
</p>
<p>She moved for a thrust, but he leapt when her arm moved and came down somersault-spinning.</p>
<p>She dashed to one side, but he followed in hot in pursuit with red phase-shadows trailing behind. Her dash cycle cut out but his kept going, too fast, too fast – slashed diagonal across her chest, horizontal across her belly, her shields doing nothing – but with a deft twist she parried an overhead swing. She pushed back, shove-grappling – but he cut off his own blade off and on for a fraction of a second, passing through her shove and scoring a hit from her shoulder to her hip. All her follow-through did was graze the swept curves of his helmet as he dodged and moved to swing again.</p>
<p>She dashed to the wall, jumped, clung, jumped back for a fresh attack, but Zero punched the ground. A dome of… some kind of fat energy comets flew up and out of his fist on impact, spaced out over 180 degrees, striking her and blasting holes in the setting. Her mass kept moving right for him, she thrusted her saber, but he was up and moving before it struck.</p>
<p>Zero turned and thrusted back at her, and Meteor was struck by the beauty of it. His whole body turned to follow his wrist, a grace of intent and clarity of purpose. All her dumpy butt did was shove the blade out in a straightish line. The funny-as-a-cemetery sense of being totally outclassed hit her about as hard as his saber, which buzzed with busy electric arcs down its length as it clashed against her strobing shields.</p>
<p>Meteor gave him distance, but he gave her pursuit. Perfect.</p>
<p>She whipped out her secondary, low-phase saber, turned and dashed right into him, scissoring both full-length blades and—</p>
<p><em>Did he just freaking </em>jump<em> out of it?!</em></p>
<p>The somersault slash carved into her head and shoulder, but she still had dash to spare. She slammed her front foot down hard, jerked herself back under his arc and overhand swung both blades.</p>
<p>She hit his legs. His shields flashed.</p>
<p>
  <em>I hit him! I actually hit him!</em>
</p>
<p>That was at least some consolation as his saber turned into a giant icicle.</p>
<p>He completed his descent and ended her smile.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&gt; SIMULATION COMPLETE: YOU HAVE BEEN RETIRED &lt;</p>
<p>&gt; FINAL COMBAT ESTIMATE: B &lt;</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Flurry whistled. “Two blows. One solid.”</p>
<p>“I suck,” Meteor pouted.</p>
<p>“No you don't. Some B-ranks out there couldn’t even touch him.”</p>
<p>“I used to be an A, y'know. Used to be...”</p>
<p>“Eh, it's just a letter, you'll get it back. Starting from a good place, too. You’ve got some twist.”</p>
<p>“So I'm told.”</p>
<p>“Done?” Flurry went back to the terminal.</p>
<p>“Not yet. I kinda forgot how useful sims were.”</p>
<p>“And fun.”</p>
<p>“Useful.”</p>
<p>“Fuuuun.”</p>
<p>“All right,” Meteor admitted, “maybe a little fun.”</p>
<p>“That’s the spirit. So who next, X?”</p>
<p>“No, bring up my list please.”</p>
<p>“Can do.” Which she did.</p>
<p>Meteor’s list of past Mavericks went back years, arranged in a scrolling column of mugshots. With her active service having started in the Doppler War, she was at that moment up to 26 credited Maverick retirements or co-retirements – some from single-target missions, others from allied operations where Mavericks came in multiple and mechaniloids came in flood. It was a very respectable veteran record for anyone, given the time frame. Wars boosted everyone’s numbers, provided that they survived.</p>
<p>Many of her Mavericks were Class B – an even match, on paper. About half were Class A – theoretically equal to her old specs, however easy or difficult they had proven in context. Two were Class S – the likes of X and Zero – very hard-won even with abundant support and a tandem combat partner both times.</p>
<p>She wasn’t up for another severe humbling quite so soon, nor did she want to make things too easy, so she skimmed the A-list.</p>
<p>“I’ll take Leonid.”</p>
<p>“Oof. Good luck.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor found herself under the stars of Arizona on a big hill among rocky outcrops.</p>
<p>Starcross Leonid, bright constellations speckling his black mane, rose from a meditative sit atop a rock tower and jumped down to her level with the grace of, well, a lion. He took a boxer’s stance, but not every boxer had a pair of micro-missile launchers on their knuckles.</p>
<p>She remembered him as being a pain at any range. His mane hid a ring of six more launchers with bigger payloads.</p>
<p>Leonid waited for her to make the first move. She snapped a shot at him to make him dodge, then shot a stream of her new Fluid Lockdown across his landing zone. His clawed foot landed and slid out like a hammer struck his ankle. His other leg slammed down and slipped another direction, sending him flat on his back.</p>
<p>
  <em>I like this weapon already.</em>
</p>
<p>Leonid capitalized on his prone position, clapped his ankles together and fired two larger missiles from the tubular launchers above and behind his heels.</p>
<p>Meteor dashed out, timed out the cycle and paved her next path with a Lockdown stream. She maintained dash velocity over the frictionless surface and pulled off a hit-and-run with her main saber just as Leonid righted himself. His shields flashed and he one-two punched four micro-missiles – the same attack she had claimed from him in life – that comfortably missed her.</p>
<p>He swung a roundhouse kick and another medium missile whistled for Meteor on a curving arc. She backpedaled and rapid-fired her buster at it even as another series of knuckle missiles sailed for her, each one with a spiraling path matching its partner. The arcing missile exploded as she slashed down the first few micros, accepted the blow from two more and spat back a missile of her own, following it up with buster fire to burst the rest.</p>
<p>Leonid caught her projectile on his defensively-blocking forearms. The thermite burn set off his shields again.</p>
<p>He threw out his arms and roared. Six missiles each as big as Meteor’s arm rocketed from behind his mane and curved straight for her.</p>
<p>There was nothing for it but to run. She dashed out and Lockdown-slicked her dash farther, but they were just as fast. She sabered down the first one and three more thundered into her before she could unload another cryomer stream at the other two. The temperature shock burst them so close it barely mitigated the damage.</p>
<p>The lion pounced through the smoke, but Meteor was already running, her shields laboring hard from the bombardment. Buster fire kept him dodging and weaving as he followed, but as she neared an outcrop he stood still and crossed his arms. She knew the tell and paid him a Melter rocket. He idly swatted it down, his hand burning and his shields flashing as the panels of his star-dotted mane separated rather than flared out, revealing rows of holes. Dozens of Star Salvo micro-missiles streaked out, over and over. It was all Meteor could do to keep ahead of them and shoot a few down, but when her next dash quit the end of the barrage pounded her like hail. Her poor shield battery did what it could.</p>
<p>Leonid closed on her again, but she spent her last shot of Fluid Lockdown on a body shot rather than a floor hazard. It coated his front, seizing up his limbs. His momentum sent him down, ice-coated.</p>
<p>Meteor ran up with both sabers in her hands and cut three hits off his clashing shields before he broke free and swung both legs into her chest for a double missile-kick.</p>
<p>His all-but-shock-proof armor sent him back like a dash and ragdolled her into the air. She landed and skidded, her shields raving in protest before finally giving up… and she saw him flaring out his mane.</p>
<p>
  <em>Oh no.</em>
</p>
<p>Leonid reared back and roared, his big missiles streaking free. Her memory flashed – six rockets, six panels, six wings, flying blades helicoptering instead of rocketing. She was finished…</p>
<p>
  <em>No! Never again!</em>
</p>
<p>She fired her crappy dash and flipped her sabers underhand on the way. With a well-timed leap she passed through the closing iris of heavy missiles. She watched Leonid’s face with satisfaction as she opened her mouth and brought up her sabers…</p>
<p>Which was when the missiles caught up.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&gt; SIMULATION COMPLETE: YOU HAVE BEEN RETIRED &lt;</p>
<p>&gt; FINAL COMBAT ESTIMATE: B &lt;</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor stared at the inside of her pod and silently hit the Open button.</p>
<p>“Pretty epic finish,” Flurry assessed. “Found your screw-it point, huh?”</p>
<p>She stepped out of the pod. “Something like that.”</p>
<p>“You take constructive criticism?”</p>
<p>“Yeah?”</p>
<p>Flurry replayed the duel on the main terminal. It always felt longer than it actually took. “First, the <em>vee-wess</em> draw on that ice special’s too shallow to use as both a hitter <em>and</em> a getaway option. You’ll run out too fast. And if it’s a getaway, it really limits your ranged options <em>as</em> you’re getting away.”</p>
<p>“I noticed.”</p>
<p>“Second, they’re sabers, not baseball bats. You put way too much of your arms into the swing. And lastly, when your dash or your anything’s on cooldown, you don’t do enough while you wait for it. Those are precious seconds you could be filling with more hurt.”</p>
<p>“It worked for me before…”</p>
<p>“And look where that got you. You were tanky before, weren’t you?”</p>
<p>“More tankish than tanky, but yes.”</p>
<p>“Well that’s not who I’m looking at right now. So either tank back up or try to drop some of those tankish habits.” She prodded Meteor’s chest. “They’ll kill you.”</p>
<p>Meteor frowned a little. She had been welcomed back, taken as good news, openly appreciated, and given tools to regain her strength, but it took until Flurry for her to really be <em>corrected</em>. Even Skittle’s advice was short and snippy, just like them.</p>
<p>
  <em>Why didn’t anyone else give it to me straight? Reliable old Meteor Showa, she’s got this, no need to help her…</em>
</p>
<p>“Thanks, Flurry. You’re a good person.”</p>
<p>“Yep. You ever want to practice, I’m here. Oh, and Thompson, probably.”</p>
<p>“He doesn’t live here too, does he?”</p>
<p>“Nah, he ducks out whenever his shift’s up. Sometimes a job’s just a job…”</p>
<p>Meteor left on that thought, but stopped at the door.</p>
<p>“Hey Flurry, what kind of drinks do you like?”</p>
<p>Flurry’s eye sank to a hemisphere over her seamless faceplate.</p>
<p>“Oh. Um. I mean.”</p>
<p>“You want a thank-you present, I’ll take scented candles.”</p>
<p>“Gotcha.” Meteor gave her a finger-guns goodbye to try and save face.</p>
<p>Meteor left the sims room and made to head out. As she did, a loud electric crackling diverted her attention.</p>
<p>Over at the firing ranges, Volt Batteram filled the ground of his lane with lightning one hoof-stomp discharge at a time. Targets at the far end popped from surface-to-air electric flashes.</p>
<p>Meteor lifted her hand. “Hey.”</p>
<p>“Mm.”</p>
<p>“New trick?”</p>
<p>“Synergized.”</p>
<p>“From the cop-killer, right?”</p>
<p>He nodded. “Ion Conduck. Repliforce sergeant. Wish he’d lasted longer.”</p>
<p>Volt stomped like thunder and lightning crackled down the lane.</p>
<p>Meteor looked away. “Still no love lost for ‘em, huh?”</p>
<p>Volt flexed his fingers and punched his knuckles together. The flat yellow panels above either row bounced apart with a crackle and formed a ball of lightning, which he then punched downrange. He stomped again immediately, the shockwave bolt racing the ball. The ground bolt struck first. He snorted, disapproving.</p>
<p>“No,” he said.</p>
<p>“Bet the postwar scramble gets your department a lot of stress.”</p>
<p>“Mm.”</p>
<p>“I think you’re exporting it.”</p>
<p>Volt stopped short of punching another ball into being. “What?”</p>
<p>“I went by my dep—my <em>old</em> department. They say they’re overworked.”</p>
<p>“They would,” he snorted.</p>
<p>Volt left his lane and headed to the weapon lockers. Meteor trotted after him and his long strides.</p>
<p>“Volt, are you shuffling your work to them?”</p>
<p>“Sometimes. Fits them better. Surely the shining standard of the fourth generation can clear a few files.”</p>
<p>Meteor knew he got more verbose when he was angry. She sped up and cut in front of him.</p>
<p>“Don’t be like that. I want you to stop making their jobs harder.”</p>
<p>Volt stepped around her, keyed in a few numbers and slid open a locker. Inside were infantry-grade buster bazookas. He plucked one out one-handed.</p>
<p>“Funny,” he said. “If more of them had stayed…”</p>
<p>“Stop it. The ones who left left, and the ones who stayed stayed. Leave it there, and let them do the work they’re supposed to.”</p>
<p>Volt walked back to his lane and shouldered the gun. His eyes were always black of sclera, and his angled ramming forehead plate always jutted over them, but they seemed to take on a darker shadow as he spoke. “They’re supposed to be on the field. Some are. Others fill desks, tend bars. They get stressed from the jobs they chose, that’s on them – the most powerful regulars in history.”</p>
<p>Volt electric-stomped and fired at the same time. The buster blast beat the ground bolt to a far-end target, but only by microseconds.</p>
<p>“They left while staying put,” he said. “Nice trick. Cowards. They denied what they <em>are</em> and thought there’d be no consequence.”</p>
<p>“What they <em>are?</em>” Meteor glared. “I never thought I’d hear that crap coming from you, Volt. It’s unworthy of you. You’re better than that.”</p>
<p>“I’m not a damn functionalist, Meteor. You know what I meant.”</p>
<p>“No, I really don’t,” she snapped, “enlighten me. ‘Cause it sounds like you’ve taken some ranks in spite for no good reason.”</p>
<p>Volt tinkered with the buster cannon’s settings. “It’s not for no reason. Do you think the Standards are better off non-combat?”</p>
<p>Meteor silently counted to five before replying to keep her tone level. “What I think is they have every right and regulation to decide that for themselves. And that deciding to <em>not</em> march and shoot is informed by how many of their model line did exactly that. I mean, if there were a hundred guys who looked more or less like you, and could do more or less what you do, and seventy or eighty went Maverick all at once, what would you do?”</p>
<p>He continued keying the settings for several seconds. He took careful aim at the targets downrange for several more. Meteor knew his tells; he was thinking in his measured and deliberate way. He stomp-fired in tandem again and the cannon shot hit the floor, intercepting the bolt and halting it well short of a target.</p>
<p>“I’d prove I’m not them,” he said.</p>
<p>Meteor clapped, edging some sarcasm in. “Well there you go. What exactly do you think they’re doing if not that? Oh right, <em>hiding</em>. Hasn’t it occurred to you that they’re proving themselves in their own way?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” he brought down the cannon to mess with it again. “That’s the problem. Aside from it just being stupid – proving they’re more loyal than Repliforce Standards by <em>not shooting Repliforce Standards</em> – do you really think we’re better off with officer-grade models sitting at a terminal all day?”</p>
<p>“That’s their choice. It’s none of my business.”</p>
<p>“It is. They sit. They type. They read reports. Meanwhile, you pick up the slack. I pick up the slack. They’re made for better. You <em>know</em> they’re made for better, Meteor. They throw that away and everybody gets less ready for the next war. And there’s just. No. Consequence.”</p>
<p>Meteor’s forearms were too thick to truly cross, so she held them akimbo as she stared up at him. “So you deliberately give them a harder time at the life they chose, to, what, stress them back into combat?”</p>
<p>“We need them more than they need…” he paused. “They’re making the Hunters inefficient. I’m thinking big-picture.”</p>
<p>
  <em>And trying to needle me with the word “inefficient.”</em>
</p>
<p>“You’re ‘thinking big-picture’ by burning it at the edges. You really believe the Fourth needs <em>more</em> stress in our day-to-day?”</p>
<p>Volt scowled and slammed the cannon muzzle on the floor in defiance of safety regulations. “Sixth gives them worse.”</p>
<p>“I’m not talking to Sixth, Volt Batteram, I’m talking to you. The one who keeps us running behind the scenes. The man who helped me stop a hurricane. My friend who’s been working harder than anybody appreciates and is taking it out on the wrong people for the wrong reasons. And who really is better than that, despite what he might sometimes think.”</p>
<p>He snorted again. Dusted off the cannon muzzle. Aimed it downrange. Stared. Lowered it. Sighed.</p>
<p>“What will make you happy?”</p>
<p>“Quit burdening Decomms.”</p>
<p>“Fine.”</p>
<p>“And be nicer to Standards,” Meteor pressed her advantage.</p>
<p>“I am,” he objected, “Bravo’s good. He helps in the field.”</p>
<p>“Then be nicer to the Standards who don’t.”</p>
<p>“Mm.”</p>
<p>“Use your words, Volt.”</p>
<p>“<em>Yes</em>.”</p>
<p>“Yes what?”</p>
<p>“Yes I’ll… try.”</p>
<p>Meteor extended her hand. “Good. Thank you.”</p>
<p>They shook hands.</p>
<p>“Now I think should get back to it,” she said.</p>
<p>“Mm.”</p>
<p>She started to leave.</p>
<p>“Hey,” he said. “You see I was in the sims?”</p>
<p>“I did see that.”</p>
<p>“Fight me?”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>His body language finally shed some tension. “Stupid idea, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>“Sure is.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor suffered through leisure time in her quarters with a partial re-read of Terry Pratchett’s <em>Feet of Clay</em> until Deco pinged her.</p>
<p>“Hey Mimi!” She greeted in her head. “Were you doing your next mission today or not?”</p>
<p>Meteor checked the time. “Yeah, I think I’ve chilled enough. You ready?”</p>
<p>“Sure, just gonna finish some office bits. Meet you there!”</p>
<p>Before long Meteor was back in the nerve center of the 4<sup>th</sup>, having shown the elevator her credentials. She found Nouveau occupying the seat before the big in-wall monitor, engaged in a free exchange of ideas with a leopard seal who had a pair of scanner monocles for eyes.</p>
<p>“You don’t care <em>how</em> it’s done, do you?!”  Nouveau huffed.</p>
<p>“The Sixth cares more than most,” said the seal, “and if you had the slightest – oh! Showa!”</p>
<p>“Focalizar!” She waved to her old acquaintance. “Don’t mind me.”</p>
<p>“Sorry, but I must. We’ll discuss this another time, Captain.”</p>
<p>“Now see here—!” Nouveau shouted, but Laser Focalizar cut the feed. “That <em>insufferable</em>…”</p>
<p>“Problem, Captain?”</p>
<p>Nouveau irritably flipped his perfect blonde hair over his shoulder. “No, just that walking pun taking all the glory he can. Turtle’s in a strategy conference and Plasmanta’s on a forty-hour in Columbo, so it falls to me to spar with my counterpart over scheduling operations in Rio. Sadly, we can’t all be there.”</p>
<p>“High-demand, huh?” Meteor loaded her roster.</p>
<p>“Only at the command level.” Nouveau leaned back, pinching the bridge of his elegant nose. “Sixth will prioritize high-visibility operations restoring the docks over clearing out scoundrels and Mavericks from the outskirts, mark my words…”</p>
<p>“Need a fainting couch, Cap?”</p>
<p>Nouveau pivoted half around, draping himself sideways over the mobile bench-throne seat much like, well, a fainting couch. Meteor wasn’t sure if he was self-aware about it. “What I <em>need</em>, Lieutenant, is for you to pick your assignment and be on your way. But thank you for buying me a break, regardless.”</p>
<p>“Any time.”</p>
<p>The door slid open and Deco skipped through. “Ready to go, Mimi!”</p>
<p>Nouveau sat bolt upright, his knees still hooked over the side of the chair. “Sister. I wasn’t aware your targets needed a partner.”</p>
<p>“Oh, they don’t. I’m helping her.”</p>
<p>He looked to Meteor. “I repeat my observation.”</p>
<p>Deco blocked his line of sight to Meteor. “I already put in a joint-op request for her, Brother, if you’d check your inbox.”</p>
<p>“That isn’t—”</p>
<p>Meteor brought up her selection and fell frictionless into Professional Mode. “Arbor Elk carries an edged ceratanium greataxe much like the weapon system that exploited my compositional weakness and so I felt it prudent to request officer backup rather than mechaniloid deployment. Furthermore, Captain, scans from Second Reconnaissance show a substantial Repliforce presence, well-armed and well-defended beyond the limited point-defense contingent I faced in Larsen, further meriting said backup as I am still strategically reacclimating to my extensive downgrade. Finally, First Advance did forty-five minutes of work hiding a secure beam-in pad for operational use. They report that Elk is ‘at large,’ roaming as active defense, and I’d rather not be surprised. I judged Lieutenant Deco’s perception and versatile WEAPON system to be of the highest utility in this context.” She smiled. “Captain.”</p>
<p>A few strands of hair fell over Nouveau’s elfin earcap. He was still seated sideways.</p>
<p>“Very well then. Please proceed, Lieutenants.”</p>
<p>Meteor walked past him to the teleporter room. Deco primly followed behind.</p>
<p>They waited until the door hissed shut before breaking into laughter.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:<br/>“Regulars”</p>
<p>Though X and Zero always grab headlines, and powerful anthropomorphs attract die-hard fans, the bulk of the Maverick Hunters’ forces is and always has been production-model reploids with simple humanoid designs.</p>
<p>Most “regulars” have come from trusted contractors such as CainLabs (though CainLabs itself focuses more on officer-grade custom models). Individuals recruited from elsewhere, while always welcome, have always been a minority. The Maverick Hunter regulars boasting the most reliable combat service have been the first generation’s Lanceteamer series (from United States defense contractor Amazon), the second generation’s Link Riders (from Singapore-based robotics company GreenOrange), and the third generation’s Steel Berets (from French manufacturer Vallourec).</p>
<p>Fourth-generation regulars are, broadly, one of two types: the Standard Beret series designed by the 16th Research and Development Unit and produced for both Repliforce and the Hunters, or the Cabochon series made exclusively for the Hunters by the Connecticut-based firm Crystal Labs. (The Knot Beret series was designed and produced entirely by and for Repliforce.)</p>
<p>Cabochons are divided into three lines of highly capable, team-based soldiers, each with an environmental specialization. Assigned-gender-aesthetic parity in each line is maintained at 50/50.</p>
<p>- CHRYSOPRASE: Grounded operations; green<br/>- LARIMAR: Aquatic operations; blue<br/>- HOWLITE: Aerial operations; white</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Mission 3: Arbor Elk</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meteor pursues her third Maverick through a cyberwood forest with Deco's assistance. More Repliforce officers than the mission target stand in their way.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Afternoon sun streaked through the canopy of the forest covering the rolling Ouachitas, the ancient sprawling eroded mountains shared by Arkansas and Oklahoma. There were real trees there, once, but after the numerous environmental problems of the twenty-first and -second centuries, artificial forests had to take their place as the lungs of the world. Every trunk and branch had thin streaks of metal in the bark.</p><p>Meteor understood why Repliforce was there. The “wood” of modern cybertrees was a renewable, ecologically sound source of certain useful alloys and polymers, produced essentially for free with as little as twelve months of patience. The shambling shell of an army was probably hungry for any raw materials they could get without a fuss.</p><p>She stepped off the secure beam pad, though still within range of the cloaking pylon. Both were gifts from the 1<sup>st</sup> Advance Unit, who must have treated such a simple setup job as a reward. Deco beamed down a moment later, her namesake flapper aesthetic even more out of place in the thick forest than a walking fish. She raised her arm, its black armor like a sleeve up to her armpit (minus the light blue elbow joint), and withdrew her hand past her jeweled bracelet cuff to ready a buster.</p><p>{The enemy has many spies,} she mentally texted to Meteor.</p><p>{Birds, beasts,} Meteor replied, making Deco smirk. {Still got a VWES-2?}</p><p>{Yeah, a 4’s still heckspensive and my core templates already cover a lot.}</p><p>Meteor nodded. Replacing her VWES-4 – even empty of enemy WEAPON data – was the most expensive part of her rebuild. {What’s your loadout?}</p><p>{Old standbys: Iron Orbit, Sakura Spread. You know me, I’m super general.}</p><p>The inside edge of a holo-curtain shimmered at the border of the pylon’s effective range. Meteor headed for it.</p><p>{Hey, general is great. We elemental types can get hurt bad when we’re surprised.}</p><p>She and Deco stepped through and took in the quiet woods. A few birds called in the distance. A rustling to Meteor’s right caught her attention.</p><p>Arbor Elk, seven feet of green and gold armor under a wicked curving rack of fourteen-point antlers, held stock-still and stared at them. Propped on his shoulder was a double-bit battleaxe with a Repliforce insignia on the face.</p><p>Meteor stared right back.</p><p>{Deco.}</p><p>Deco turned around and held just as still.</p><p>“Elk?” Meteor tried.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>She inclined her head, eyes fixed on him. “Meteor Showa.”</p><p>Elk’s eyes flicked to her partner.</p><p>“Deco,” said Deco.</p><p>Elk, as mobile as a statue, looked back to Meteor. His voice was like his axe, heavy and sharp. “Defectors?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>The Maverick leapt deeper into the woods with terrifying grace for his size.</p><p>Meteor give chase. Deco bolted alongside her.</p><p>{Why didn’t you see him?!} Meteor messaged.</p><p>{He was behind me!}</p><p>{So much for stealth.} Meteor slammed her hand on her earcap. “<em>Meteor Showa to Fifth!</em>”</p><p>She watched as Elk leapt onto branches which, from her lagging-behind angle, seemed to grow out for him. Dashing only barely kept him in sight.</p><p>“Meteor!” Atajo commed back. “Got you both in, what’s up?”</p><p>“Beam-in dropped us in the target’s lap but he’s too quick! Need tracking!”</p><p>“On it,” her favorite navigator snapped into action. “Getting a lot of interference…”</p><p>“That’s Repliforce for you.” Deco raised her arm and fired not one plasma round but three in immediate succession, dismissing a pair of Batton Bone bats swooping in. Their explosions occluded the line of sight, and when the Hunters broke past, Elk was gone. “Crap, I lost him!”</p><p>“I didn’t,” said Atajo. “His signal’s going uphill north-northwest. … Aaand now I lost him too.”</p><p>Meteor dashed and leapt over a giant exposed root. Deco, smaller and nimbler, ducked and dashed under it. “Gives us a heading. Thanks. Can you cut through the jamming?”</p><p>“Hey, they don’t call me Atajo for nothing. Pulling up the map… looks like you’re going to a lumber plant. Log flumes and everything.”</p><p>“Nice.” She single-shot down another bat. “They charge admission?”</p><p>“No, but you gotta be this tall to ride. Sorry Deco.”</p><p>“Hah, see if I use you again!” Deco chided.</p><p>“Bear left,” he directed, “the gradient’s lower.”</p><p>The two Hunters followed his direction.</p><p>“Movement ahead, sixty meters!” Deco warned.</p><p>“This interference bites,” Atajo observed. “<em>There</em> they are. You’re made.”</p><p>“Mechaniloids?” Meteor asked.</p><p>“At least two.”</p><p>“Four,” said Deco, eyes wide. “Mine.”</p><p>Meteor saw them: two pairs of Flammingle-Rs. The purple, buzzsaw-crowned birds finally took notice, and with enviable gyroscopic balance they flipped their bodies on a 360-degree forward spin while running. A staggered volley of four metal saws came sailing at the Hunters.</p><p>Deco skidded short and threw up both busters. A barrage of gray, slightly convex square plates flew for the saws, flat side first. Titanium blade-teeth sheared and broke against the flying ceratanium plates, arresting their movement even as more plates simply bounced off nearby trees. The pink and blue crystals of Deco’s cuffs blinked in sequence and her busters issued streams of finger-sized needles, whipping the air and thudding into each oncoming Flammingle. Not a single spike went wide or wasted.</p><p>The running birds exploded and rolled their debris downhill to Deco’s feet. She tapped a buster cuff to the brim of her cloche helmet.</p><p>“Six to one,” she smiled at Meteor.</p><p>Meteor toed a plate. “Litterbug.”</p><p>“Didn’t know whether the saws would curve,” Deco shrugged.</p><p>“Got a blip uphill,” said Atajo. “He’s parked.”</p><p>Meteor and Deco pressed on, hoofing it uphill.</p><p>“Quick read?” Meteor asked her forensic analyst friend while charging up her buster.</p><p>“Narrow trees, diameters in the nineties, planted months ago. Expect popouts.”</p><p>“Atajo would see them coming.”</p><p>“Cybertrees give off a signal too, they’d foul suborbital—”</p><p>Two more Flammingles ran out from behind narrow trees.</p><p>Meteor let loose her charged shot at one as Deco filled the other with spikes. A third stupid bird kick-strode through the first one’s smoke and clanged its disc-like foot under Meteor’s chin, but that only gave her the best possible angle on its body for a quick Melter spray. It burned through and exploded the bird before it hit the ground.</p><p>“Scans,” Deco finished her sentence. “You can trust my eyes better.”</p><p>“To a hundred eighty degrees.”</p><p>“Hush.”</p><p>No further birds bothered them. Meteor made out a building atop the hill as the trees thinned. They broke into the clearing to find a pair of standard stay-put sentry Flammingles and a Gabyoall, a ground-cruising spinny blade annoyance, weaving around the birds’ legs. The mechaniloids—</p><p>—went dark, as a green and yellow flying squirrel dropped from above and clung to Meteor’s face over her eyes.</p><p>She was a little embarrassed by the undignified noise she made as she wedged her buster under the bridge of her face, shot the squirrel and ripped it off. The Flammingles, quicker on the uptake than she would have estimated, had already sent their buzzsaws flying. She hurled the injured squirrel and watched it explode against one blade as Deco fired an identical saw into the other. Following up on the sentry birds was a simple matter of shooting.</p><p>Another flying squirrel swooped in and washed Meteor with a gout of flame from its tail. Her thermal systems completely no-sold it and she shot it down with ease.</p><p>“Meteor? Question.”</p><p>“Yeah Atajo?”</p><p>“Did that ‘<em>aurghfdlaf’</em> noise come from you or a dying cockatoo?”</p><p>Deco giggled.</p><p>“Morgun,” Meteor flatly replied. “Landed right on my face.”</p><p>Atajo audibly shuddered. “Hate those things.”</p><p>The dumb line-patrolling Gabyoall was vulnerable to few weapons, but Meteor’s thermite was one of them. It summarily ruptured under a glob.</p><p>“Forget it,” she wiped her mouth with her wrist, “is Elk still there?”</p><p>“Still there. Getting flight movement inbound, maybe backup.”</p><p>“More squirrels?” Deco asked.</p><p>“I sure hope not.”</p><p>They came to the building, a sort of hangar with only two walls. Three Ganseki Carriers, big blue-armored flying clamps, ignored them as they carried a giant log under the roof. Meteor couldn’t hear any sawing going on, but there was definitely rushing water.</p><p>They headed inside. At the far end, an artificial spring flooded into a flume channel bending out of sight downhill. In the middle, wood was being scanned; Morguns glided all around, beaming harmless laser light out of their chests over big logs and bigger cross-sections of trunks. Several more Gansekis waited off to the sides or on made-to-purpose hooks on the ceiling.</p><p>Arbor Elk hopped onto the freshly-delivered log, axe and all.</p><p>“Go away,” he rumbled.</p><p>The Hunters leveled their busters. “Make us,” Meteor dared.</p><p>Elk shot first: a pair of oblong spheroids Meteor mistook for American footballs. Her charge shot and Deco’s rapid-fire string hit them, but they absorbed the damage, and when they landed short of the women they sprang to life far faster than any tree had a right to grow. In the space of a second they each faced seven-foot rectangular cyberwood monoliths. The surfaces met in the middle at an uneven seam.</p><p>Meteor broke left and Deco right. The just-arrived Gansekis took the log – and Elk – out to the flume.</p><p>Two other Gansekis no longer waited patiently. They pivoted around and started firing slow-propellant missiles.</p><p>“Hostiles only!” Meteor ordered, dashing ahead. She speed-jumped over the missiles and started charging her Melter. Four different Morguns glommed onto her head as she landed. She blindly grabbed and shot them off, but not fast enough to avoid a missile tagging her.</p><p>She threw a squirrel off one eye and into an incoming missile. She hucked another straight ahead and spent her Melter charge as a Prominence, the arc neatly splatting the fire squirrel into the Ganseki and burning through both. Explosion followed explosion.</p><p>Meteor rubbed her face. <em>All right, so the hard counter for flex parts is a pile of squirrels. Good to know.</em></p><p>Deco pulled a plain gray broadsword out of an exploding Ganseki and hurled it spinning through another Morgun. “Hostiles down. Clear the room?”</p><p>The other Gansekis in the room didn’t seem to notice them. Three more brought in a giant cross-section of trunk and the remaining Morguns glided right over to it, readily scanning.</p><p>“No. They’re here for the wood so he’s not siccing <em>everything</em> on us.” She headed to the water channel, Deco close behind. “Atajo, position?”</p><p>“Last bearing was downstream. Map shows the flume goes a ways to the sawmill, where the jamming’s the strongest.”</p><p>“Two hundred fourteen centimeters deep,” said Deco, her bright blue eyes wide open. “Ride or swim?”</p><p>The Morguns seemed to be taking their time with the cross-section.</p><p>“Better keep up,” Meteor amicably taunted as she dived right in.</p><p>“Hey!”</p><p>Meteor jetted down the rushing gushing half-pipe. Her clearance on three sides was close yet comfortable as she stayed submerged. Her throat hummed up, just in case.</p><p>“Mechaniloid signals inbound!” Atajo commed, confirming the case.</p><p>She rose to the surface and made a splashy wake. A pair of flying domes, ladybug shells between thrusters below and spikes above, hovered around him.</p><p><em>Tentoroids! Black Shells!</em> She had decommissioned their entire series from the Veracruz 4<sup>th</sup>’s mechaniloid fleet on her very first day because they were costly and redundant. It was hard not to think of them as wanting revenge.</p><p>Her tail jets let her swim faster than cyberwood could float. Elk, stably stanced on the middle of the floating log with his axe on his back, hadn’t noticed her.</p><p>She sank to the bottom and engaged her dash. The log came up fast. She veered to the right, breached—</p><p>Elk’s seed pod was already in flight when her mouth erupted a thick stream of molten metal. In the space of an instant the seed tried to snap active but only spread charry burning tentacles like a handful of firework snakes before it collided with Meteor and knocked her into the side of the flume. Enough of her attack still made it through to make Elk bellow.</p><p>But now she had bigger problems.</p><p>The Black Shells moved to flank her and match her velocity, and tilted toward her, spikes out.</p><p>Stunned by her charcoal bludgeoning, she kickdashed off the channel floor, but her tailfin failed to clear the beetles’ collision pinch. Her shields flared as the physics at play pitched her 90 degrees forward and down, splashing her facefirst into the flume as the ladybugs ground themselves into her tail.</p><p>Upside-down, Meteor bent up and fired, but her buster rounds plinked off her captors’ shells.</p><p>A plain gray spear impaled one through the thruster.</p><p>Meteor looked upside-down at Deco, who rode a gray rectangle the size of a door down the flume like a surfboard. She aimed a buster and launched another spear, catching the stricken ladybug in the undercarriage.</p><p>The explosion freed Meteor, who splashed back down, kicked off the flume floor, twisted half around and splashed her remaining assailant with a direct-hit Prominence stream. Between the heat, the penetrative ability, and the ladybug’s lack of shields making the effect linger, one full-exposure hit was all it took. Deco ducked, passed under the explosion, and surfed down the flume with Meteor swimming beside.</p><p>“Damage?”</p><p>“Tail. I’m fine.”</p><p>The bottom of the flume came up quick and led into a giant hangar of a building. Elk’s log – sans Elk, she saw – cleared a pair of signal posts which flashed red. Swift mechanical actuator arms grabbed it and turned it sideways for a titanic buzzsaw to rise from the water and cut it in two.</p><p>Two more black Tentoroids came up faster beside the flume and tilted in, readying a collide. Meteor built charge in her throat, but the trigger gate approached.</p><p>“Going left,” said Meteor.</p><p>“Right,” Deco confirmed.</p><p>Meteor dash-jumped clear out of the flume, missing the Tentoroid but forcing it to follow her down. It launched for her, too fast to dodge completely, but slow enough with her body’s still-new flex parts to catch her arm on the spikeless side of its shell. Her grip streaked over its hull and found purchase on its undercarriage. She clung with both hands and spun wildly in midair, riding its thrust in a tight spin headed for the ground.</p><p>She looked into its little angry-eyed face and gave it a fully-charged kiss.</p><p>The shell filled with thermite. The black turned red and then white, melting down before her eyes.</p><p>She shoved it away and stuck the landing as the exploding ladybug crashed to the ground. Spinning flecks of flame sizzled into the earth beneath the support struts of the flume’s final stretch.</p><p>Ahead of her at the end of the flume, a sawmill as big as an airship hangar straddled a river. Far off to her right, another downhill flume from another wooded mountain fed into it.</p><p>“Beat you there,” Deco commed.</p><p>“Nothing gets by you,” Meteor replied, hustling to catch up. She heard the shrieking of the big cross-section slab finally meeting the big saw and spoke when it quieted. “Atajo, I’m outside the sawmill. Where is he?”</p><p>“—n a blind— Me—or,” Atajo’s voice crackled like a bad intercom. “No i— ere, but if y— ammer— straight to— Copy?”</p><p>“Copied enough. Deco?”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“Point-to-point from here on, and look for—”</p><p>Deco screamed.</p><p>Meteor dashed.</p><p>#</p><p>She came to the junction of the woods and the mill. Bare earth led to the flume’s giant saw apparatus and a stretch of – appropriately – cyberwood-panel flooring before the mill proper. Deco backdashed to Meteor’s side, her shields flashing from a big hit. Her back was scorched in a clean diagonal, clearly from the pre-flash contact of a beam saber.</p><p>Between the mill and the Hunters, three female-type Standard Berets in black and lavender armor hovered to the ground via thrusters in their feet and the insides of their wide-paneled skirts. Each of them was slightly off-model, each a variant not by mere upgrade but by initial design. Their service hats were on tight over hair as purple as night.</p><p>“We were expecting worse,” said the middle one.</p><p>Meteor scoured her memory for help. She had never heard of…</p><p>“Lieutenant Carat-Three?” Deco guessed.</p><p>“Three as one,” said the tall one to the right, who had a yellow shield-projector crystal on her right shoulder and sported a ponytail. “It’s called teamwork, Hunter.”</p><p>“One as three,” said the short and pigtailed one to the left, whose projector was on her left shoulder. “True Repliforce discipline.”</p><p>“Not that we expect a Hunter to understand,” said the middle and broadest one, wearing her gem just below her neck and her hair framing her face. “We are the power of unity!”</p><p>“Maria Alnitak,” said the tall one.</p><p>“Maria Alnilam,” said the broad one.</p><p>“Maria Mintaka,” said the short one.</p><p>“<em>Las Tres Marias!</em>” They chorused.</p><p>“Neat,” Meteor grunted as her throat charged up. “Now stand down and let us pass.”</p><p>{Who tagged you?} Meteor messaged even as she spoke.</p><p>{Swordy,} replied Deco. {Orders?}</p><p>The Marias laughed and rose off the ground. Alnitak snapped out a long beam saber from behind her back; Alnilam drew her hands back into her twin busters; Mintaka produced two beam knives from holsters in her skirt.</p><p>{Stop Gunny.}</p><p>Another log met the saw.</p><p>Alnitak swooped first for Meteor with Mintaka in her wake while Alnilam jetted on an outside curve.</p><p>Meteor swung her right arm and lashed a sideways arc of Fluid Lockdown as she grabbed her main, high-phase saber with her left.</p><p>Alnitak and Mintaka diverted around it, surely aiming to pincer her. Before they closed she fired her dash and kickjumped off the side of the saw motor, straight for Alnitak. Surprise flashed over her face before her saber flashed out. Meteor mustered all the torque of her torso and injured tail and did battle-sim-Zero proud; Alnitak’s slash grazed her back rather than cut her lengthwise as Meteor scored a fluid stab leading her rotational axis into Alnitak’s waistline. Both of their shields flashed, Alnitak’s strobing harder as the plasma blade dragged down her leg with the arc of Meteor’s jump.</p><p>Meteor’s back foot hit the ground and Mintaka pounced, daggers underhand. Meteor greeted her with a Prominence stream but the fierce Repliforce officer powered ahead, most of the molten metal slicking off the strobe of her shields’ surface, to light into her. Her first blade carved into Meteor’s upper back and clashed blue diamond-shaped sparks of interference off her shields that labored yet harder under her second and third stab. Meteor twisted to slash and punish her, but Mintaka’s reaction speed sent her out and free – and splashed by a follow-up Fluid Lockdown stream.</p><p>The heat differential between thermite and cryomer made Mintaka shriek and her shields rave brighter. Meteor moved to capitalize but Alnitak flew in, saber lit. Meteor parried it with her own, popped out her hand and reached for her other saber—</p><p>“<em>Get back!</em>” Deco shouted.</p><p>Meteor dashed backwards. A pair of third-stage plasma shots roared through her former position and blast-sheared into the saw engine. Alnitak followed through, a two-handed grip on her saber, but she was no Zero. Meteor parried and clashed and attempted a scissor swipe but the tall figure flew up and out to escape. <em>All right, maybe a little Zero.</em></p><p>Meteor clicked off her sabers, looked and saw Deco dancing into Alnilam. The figure Meteor knew best as a bright fountain of good cheer was a slashing clanging tornado buffeting her foe’s defenses, dual-wielding platonic gray shortswords like an action hero even as three rough black basketball-sized spheres flew around her in a tight orbit. Alnilam kept shooting as she flew away on an escape path, but the spheres blunted her shots and Deco sicced them after her. One missed but two clanged hard and made the flyer’s shields blink again.</p><p>The Marias regrouped, hovering above the saw side by side.</p><p>“The Fire Fish is quick,” said Alnitak.</p><p>“The Artist is quicker,” said Alnilam.</p><p>“They’re not quick enough,” said Mintaka.</p><p>“<em>Not for this</em>,” they chorused.</p><p>Another noisy log-sawing signaled round two.</p><p>The Marias dived for Meteor in a tight column formation, Alnitak-Alnilam-Mintaka.</p><p>After a whole career of planning to take hits, Meteor’s mind started to catch up to the upstepped speed of her new parts.</p><p>{Sakura high!} She messaged.</p><p>Alnitak swung her saber hard but Meteor parried it two-bladed, leaving her open for Alnilam soaring overhead and bringing down her busters. Dozens of flower-pink plasma petals suddenly hailed into the gunner, fouling her shots wide and letting Meteor shove-dash past the parry and straight under Alnilam for Mintaka – who wasn’t there.</p><p>Deco, eyes wide, split her pink barrage, one buster for the flying gunner and the other for the shortest Maria coming for her on full thruster burn. Alnitak, broken away from Meteor, rocketed to close the pincer in Deco’s blind spot.</p><p>Meteor skidded her boot and threw the rest of her dash into a right angle. She wasn’t fast enough. Alnitak scored a fly-by slash, aborting Deco’s barrage and opening her to one, two, two more, a <em>fifth</em> cut from Mintaka before Meteor could tackle the knifey little demon. She paid back the punishment with both sabers thrusting and followed up with slash after slash, each cut madly parried by the shorter, swifter reploid.</p><p>With Meteor’s attention on Mintaka, Alnilam was free to blast Deco twice more with second-stage green-comet shots, sending her to her knees under her ominously slow-blinking shields. Alnitak kicked off the front wall of the sawmill and blazed for her.</p><p>Meteor heard the blasts, heard the kick and the trajectory of the thrust. She only dared turn her head when Mintaka fled her assault. “<em>Deco?!</em>”</p><p>Deco jerked her head up, eyes wide, as Alnitak came for her life.</p><p>Meteor only saw the blur. A gray trident from Deco’s right buster struck the swordswoman in the gut, pitching her body forward at the tip and <em>skidding</em> Deco sideways with the force of impact. The stab came so fast the tines were already in before Alnitak’s shields flashed.</p><p>“Sister!” Alnilam and Mintaka cried.</p><p>Deco swung her arm, threw Alnitak off like a speared fish and fired the freed weapon past her at the flying duo, making them jet apart to dodge.</p><p>Meteor spat a Melter missile but it crashed into the ground as Alnitak evaded it. The trio regrouped again in midair, looking almost as terrible for wear as Deco.</p><p>Meteor and Alnilam charged their busters.</p><p>“He said she was slow!” Alnitak shouted.</p><p>“He <em>said</em> she was weak to blades!” Alnilam shouted back.</p><p>“<em>Solid</em> blades!” Mintaka griped. “And he said nothing about ice!”</p><p>“Who said?!” Meteor aimed her buster over each of them.</p><p>The three of them shared a quick silence before speaking as one.</p><p>“<em>We three shall meet again</em>.”</p><p>Alnilam fired both third-stage shots and Meteor returned volley the same instant. She made to dodge the blasts, but they weren’t coming for her.</p><p>Without thinking she dashed to body-block them from Deco still kneeling, but the distance was just too far – and Deco already had her busters pointed at the ground. They formed a square wall twice the size of the rectangle she’d rode down the flume, a barrier that blocked the impacts and cracked from the force. Meteor’s arrival was timely enough to catch it before it could fall and scuff Deco’s helmet.</p><p>She threw her buster back up and looked for a Maria to shoot, but found none.</p><p>Meteor tossed the wall chunk aside. “I’m so sorry.”</p><p>“You did nothing wrong.” Deco braced on the remainder of the wall and stood up, sparking from slash wounds. “And you’d better not. Rest of the mission’s on you.”</p><p>Meteor supported her by the elbow and opposite shoulder. “How bad?”</p><p>“Bad. But not so bad I can’t run back.”</p><p>“The heck you will.”</p><p>Deco squeezed Meteor’s hand. “Mimi, I can make it. If I can’t then I’ll wall up and shelter in the woods, which is a lot safer than right by the bad guy nest. You have to get going. How’re your sabers?”</p><p>Meteor hesitated only a fraction of a second. Neither Deco nor Meteor herself were important enough to merit the cost and complexity of an emergency beamout, especially not on such a small-scale mission.</p><p>“Hi-beam’s empty, lo-beam’s got another eighteen seconds.”</p><p>“Then here.” Deco pointed her arm away, formed her buster and closed her eyes. The fusion-powered ion-locking fabrication technology of WEAPON, expressed in the titanium-alloy architecture templates of her unique Platonic Suite system, instantaneously flash-printed a hard gray katana. She grabbed the gray hilt, snapped it off her buster like a plastic piece from a model kit, and handed it to Meteor. “No-beam.”</p><p>Meteor took the sword. It wouldn’t hold up to consistent use, but it didn’t need to.</p><p>“I’m still sorry.”</p><p>“I <em>wanted</em> to be here, Meteor. Go!”</p><p>#</p><p>The sawmill was big and busy and noisy. Automated rollers and gantry cranes, aided by Mecha-Arm and Sky Claw clamps, moved cyberwood from the flume through all the steps of processing. Plasma bandsaws and more traditional spinning blades carved logs and trunk slices into lumber. Mechaniloids moved some of the lumber into industrial grinders for conveyors to move the splinters and dust further into the facility.</p><p>Two Knot Berets rushed her. Several more moved from further back as Sky Claws puttered back and forth.</p><p>
  <em>Staggered approach, just two at the spearhead? They’re stalling.</em>
</p><p>She advanced behind her buster. Her screening barrage peppered one to death and drove the other to pay distance that it filled with a grenade. Meteor didn’t need a flexy frame to dodge it; she dashed right under the arc and broadside tackled the poor sap into a water channel branching off the main trough. He flailed splashily as her path coincidentally paralleled his; the water led to gripping rollers with the mother of all sawblades in the middle.</p><p>She kept going after passing the buzzsaw. The Knot Beret, rather noisily, did not. Bits of bronze-colored scrap littered the rollers and fell between the cracks.</p><p>Three more of Repliforce’s grunts charged forward, but she held her ground and fired another barrage. That made her a stationary target for the fast-moving Sky Claw.</p><p>Before she knew it she was off her feet and headed back to the grandmother saw. She flicked back her head and sprayed hot metal rain at her captor. Its expiration dropped her on the rollers beside the blade a little too close for comfort. She comically wobbled down the beltless conveyor until one of the Knots tagged her with his buster pistol.</p><p>She spotted the one that did it. He and his friend vaulted a different conveyor and took cover behind it as she hopped back to the ground and returned fire. They popped out from behind their rollers to throw grenades – <em>Don’t they have any other tricks?</em> – which she avoided by dashing across. They ducked, but she hopped right on top of their cover and vomited a fatal amount of thermite down the near one’s chest.</p><p>“Gross!” The far one recoiled.</p><p>Her eyelid twitched.</p><p>The rollers took her right by the rude little football. She clamped Deco’s gift sword between her lips, grabbed him by the shoulders, hauled him up, dash-jumped off and hurled him back at Mama Sawblade. He caught it on the rising side. A few parts of him made it all the way over.</p><p>Meteor left the mother saw behind, but her children were hard at work. Mecha-Arm clamps reached here and there and carefully positioned wood slabs for trips through pairs of smaller saws.</p><p>A Standard Beret piloting a Raiden ride armor now dashed her way underneath two Hover Gunners and an electric-blue Jamminger… which… seemed to be yelling in a woman’s voice?</p><p>“Brave soldiers of Repliforce!” The flying spike-chinned face called out, its little square mouth flapping open and closed. “Why is it that we have held on so long when our resources are so much less than the Maverick Hunters?! It is because our cause is <em>just!</em>”</p><p>Meteor had a good ear for voices but hadn’t heard that voice before. She couldn’t tell whether it was a recording and there was no time to guess.</p><p>The Hover Gunners swept out to flank her, but a charged shot plowed through one and opened a gap for her to dash into and avoid the Raiden barreling past. The second Gunner kept circling and opened fire; all she could build up in time was a second-stage shot, but it was enough to silence the string of micro-bomb shells it fired.</p><p>The Raiden wheeled on her as she charged up her Melter. <em>Distance, distance!</em> She leaned back and dashed, her broken tailfin dragging on the floor. The Jamminger dived in and slammed her to a flashing stop.</p><p>“We want our <em>freedom!</em>” A man’s voice came next.</p><p>The Raiden was almost on top of her as the mechaniloid kept yammering. Meteor’s Prominence blast melted through one reaching ride armor hand and thoroughly mangled the arm, but the other arm swung for the fences low and wide and open-palmed.</p><p>She caught the hit below her center of gravity and went on a trip for the saws, but she pulled a twist out of her high-response joints and landed one-legged like a hood ornament right between them.</p><p>“Colonel has shown us these virtues through his own valiant sacrifice!” <em>That</em> voice from the Jamminger she recognized as Captain Decim. The rollers moved her right up to the waiting Hover Gunner, but she swatted down both it and its shots with a lo-beam saber swing.</p><p>The Raiden dashed for her conveyor as the Jamminger went for another dive, switching voices again to a female voice in triplicate echo.</p><p>“VICTORY is the greatest tribute we can pay those who sacrif—”</p><p>Meteor shut the stupid chatterbox up with a Melter spray and jumped back to the floor, clear of the Raiden’s gauntlet blade. Undeterred, the pilot smashed through the platform, but that only gave her the time she needed to top off a Prominence charge. The molten arc struck the vehicle on the lip of the cockpit, dividing the load between spilling down the front and spilling into the cockpit. The Standard panicked and burned, Meteor hopped up to the conveyor and up again, and decapitated him with Deco’s no-beam. He and his ride went up in flames and Meteor pressed on.</p><p>{Deco, status?}</p><p>[4004 BAD CARRIER,] her mind instantly replied.</p><p>
  <em>Good, far enough to be jammed.</em>
</p><p>She neared the back of the mill, building and holding another charge in her throat. Whereas the circular metal saws cut slabs and logs to size, plasma-edged bandsaws made lumber of them with the precision dexterity of Mecha-Arms. More Sky Claws and their spindly-armed cousins, Scramblers, took the cut pieces out to boxy Repliforce dropships outside… where a rectangular antenna rotated on a conspicuous signal tower.</p><p>A handful of Standard Berets and their Knot subordinates scrambled to leave. Meteor spotted heavy mechaniloids filtering through them and quickly making their way toward her: two tried-and-true green Victoroids and a newer green Giga Death. Decorative red double-stripes indicated that all three were of the troublingly mobile R-Series.</p><p>On top of all that, a Knot Beret who must have drawn a short straw flew in from Meteor’s left, securely clamped by a Sky Claw, carrying a currently-inactive Gabyoall under each arm.</p><p>
  <em>A wall of moving parts.</em>
</p><p>All her training and recent experience told her that the deadliest enemy was always the backup, so choosing to reduce numbers was easy.</p><p>The Prominence charge she stored on the approach drenched the flying Knot Beret from the equator up, the molten backsplash catching his carrier and cargo and crashing the lot of them into the floor. It was just not his day.</p><p>The Victoroids earned their racing stripes as they fired their dash systems, side by side, a defensive line Meteor couldn’t possibly crack before it hit her. So she didn’t even try. She turned, dashed, vaulted onto a conveyor for the height boost, and rode it as it made a right angle away from the escaping Repliforce soldiers. The mechaniloids collided with the bend shoulder-first, denting the conveyor just as Meteor jumped off backward and sprayed a Fluid Lockdown shot their way. The liquid caught them both and seized up their shoulder joints under the blink of shield-worthy damage.</p><p>Their elongated buster rounds fired over the conveyor as she landed, but she ducked and ran for the next bend. They chased her, but their mass-production dash needed longer than hers to cycle up.</p><p>She was almost feeling safe behind the hum of her throat when the Giga Death slid in around the bend and spewed a missile from its mouth-mounted cannon. She jumped back to the conveyor just fast enough for the shot to sail past her.</p><p>The Victoroid twins followed the conveyor back to her at high speed. She braced her back leg on the moving surface, yawned her mouth wide and launched a thermite rocket. The left one began exploding from thermite-upon-cryomer. Its brother was no Maria, dumbly charging ahead and firing high and low. The shots were child’s play to avoid as she neared the Giga Death.</p><p>The massive cannoneer mechaniloid did something she almost forgot was possible. It jumped. The conveyor rocked and broke under its weight, but Meteor was still rolling straight for it.</p><p>
  <em>What is it with threes today?!</em>
</p><p>She was pincered. A missile from both of the Giga Death’s cannon arms came head-on and she heard the buster shot behind.</p><p>She dash-leapt off the side, turned and hurled Deco’s gift spinning for the Victoroid. It broke through the blue-white splat of cryomer and nicked something vital enough inside to set the whole body exploding. <em>Yes!</em></p><p>The Giga Death’s fourth missile hit Meteor in the back before she landed. She accepted the blow, grabbed her remaining melee option and bolted off running for the dropships the instant her feet hit the floor.</p><p>Even the fastest Giga Death alternated between its weapons in a consistent pattern.</p><p>
  <em>Arms missed. Center hit. Arms!</em>
</p><p>She jumped straight up and let the Giga Death’s arm-cannon missiles shoot underneath. The soldiers ahead had only a second for panic as one blew apart a Knot Beret and another threaded through a lucky space in the crowd to slam a dropship.</p><p>The ships started taking off. Repliforce was getting out of dodge. The jammer stood unguarded.</p><p><em>Center!</em> Meteor juked to one side for a missile that didn’t come. Which meant –</p><p>She turned on her heel and sprayed her ice weapon at the dash-approaching mechaniloid as she ignited her lo-beam saber.</p><p>The liquid splashed across its eyes. Meteor jumped and drove her saber in. The thermal shock made it easy as pie.</p><p>She slammed onto its face, her fist behind her saber cracking the flash-frozen metal around where her saber melted through, kicked herself up and over its head and somersaulted over its back. The stricken mechaniloid kept dashing, leaving her behind as it blindly crashed into the jamming tower and exploded.</p><p>“—teor! Meteor do you copy?!” Atajo rang in her ears.</p><p>“Loud and clear!”</p><p>“Aces! Comin’ in strong now!”</p><p>“Elk! And Deco! Where are they?!” Feeling rather keyed up from the hours that passed in the last several minutes, Meteor ran outside beside the river where the flume water emptied out and swept her buster over the enemy landing zone. No one remained. The last, lightly missiled dropship smashed through the canopy.</p><p>“Four dropships leaving the scene on rendezvous bearing with two Rightwhale-class carriers a couple clicks south of you. Elk’s not on any of them and Deco’s fine.”</p><p>“I’d be finer if these bats would buzz off,” Deco replied.</p><p>It didn’t look like Repliforce left any other surprises. Not a single hint of a Maria. Meteor cautiously allowed herself to come down.</p><p>“Signals per dropship?”</p><p>“Twenty-six bodies split eight-eight-three-seven.”</p><p>“Good. And on the carriers?”</p><p>“The whales are empty, dropships deployed. But I’m picking up a lot of reploid signals in what the map tells me is laborer dorms by the beam-in pad. Didn’t see ‘em when you landed. The other four dropships are there too, engines hot – there’s your reinforcements.”</p><p>“How many?” Deco asked.</p><p>“I count thirty-nine.”</p><p>“Then I’m hiding and turtling up.”</p><p>“Wait.” Meteor looked over the river. “Something doesn’t feel right. Run an energen compression scan on the dorms.”</p><p>“Doing it.” Four seconds passed. “Done. Output rating’s too low even for Knots. They’re all civs, Meteor, good call. Looks like they’re <em>boarding</em> the ships.”</p><p>Meteor realized it all at once. The mission description said that Elk, after killing off the human workers, had taken in Repliforce sympathizers weeks before the combatants arrived. If she and Deco met him close to the dorms, then he had been leading them away…</p><p>“<em>Got him</em>,” Atajo cut into her train of thought. “Elk’s parked at the top of the northeast flume.”</p><p>Even further away.</p><p>Elk was baiting her off the sympathizers. Protecting them.</p><p>Meteor hustled around the side of the sawmill, quite done with that funhouse. The flume stood unguarded.</p><p>
  <em>He still killed the humans. He still aided Repliforce. He’s still a Maverick. He knows what’s coming, which is the whole reason he ran.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He knew I’d follow.</em>
</p><p>“Meteor?”</p><p>“I copy. Shortest path?”</p><p>“Deco said your tail’s broken?”</p><p>“Just the fin, the swimjets are fine. I can salmon up the flume.”</p><p>“Then there you go. It’ll lead you right to him and the channel’s less likely to have land mines.”</p><p>“Noted. Keep an eye on him.”</p><p>“Keepin’ two.”</p><p>A big trunk slab rode the flume through another trigger gate and down into another saw. She scaled the saw engine, dash-leapt into the water and took to it like a fish.</p><p>#</p><p>The second flume control building was much like the first. Mechaniloids innocently went about their business as Meteor splashed her way up and onto the polished cyberwood flooring.</p><p>Arbor Elk had his back turned to her, seated on a cyberwood cube, his axe shouldered. The thermite burn from earlier had cooled; a big smudge of a scar marred his back like a noble battle wound. A hovering Scrambler’s spindly arms and pointy actuators poked around in it, sparking inoffensively, fixing him up.</p><p>“You are too late, Hunter,” he rumbled.</p><p>“For the sympathizers?”</p><p>Elk turned his head in profile. “You will not kill them. They will be dropped off. The ships will crash. They will say that Repliforce captured them. That they were innocent. That they escaped.” He stood up and the Scrambler moved with him, closing the wound with fast-set filler. “Everyone will believe them. They will live in peace again…”</p><p>“Because they were hated for picking the wrong side,” Meteor finished.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“You wanted to protect them.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“No matter who you had to kill.”</p><p>Elk lowered his head. “Yes.”</p><p>“You had to have known where that would lead, Maverick.”</p><p>“I have no regrets.”</p><p>Arbor Elk faced the Hunter and shifted his axe off his shoulder. The solid ceratanium blade rang on the floor with dramatic purpose.</p><p>“Finish your hunt.”</p><p>She built a charge in her throat. The hum cued him to leap for her, and up came his axe.</p><p>She read his arc, aborted the charge, spat the floor and dashed under him, building a new charge in her arm. He landed low, hooves straddling her lava puddle. She turned and spat again, but Elk already shot a seed at the floor; it bloomed into a wall, caught fire from her hit; he cleaved it lengthwise with a single swing and kicked it straight at her. She twisted to her left, the flaming square sailed past, and she spat another burning glob just as he fired another seed that germinated in midair. A flying wall of instantly-burning wood blocked her line of sight, so she dashed around it—</p><p>And realized he leapt behind it as a shield. He was in midair, his grip two-handed. She threw up her buster and fired a full blue plasma blast as he swung.</p><p>The sharpness of his axe left something to be desired, but the power absolutely didn’t. The blade connected with her torso and <em>threw</em> her sideways into the near wall, shields strobing over the fresh gash running from her armpit to her chest. If she hadn’t shot him the arm would’ve been on the floor.</p><p>
  <em>Okay then…</em>
</p><p>Foregoing charging, she alternated rapid-spitting her Meteor Melter and rapid-firing her buster, one to deny him full use of the floor and the other to keep him moving. He was one step ahead each time, allowing himself to get tagged by buster fire if it meant avoiding the lava on the way to her. Three hits in, he made a new wall which instantly caught fire, but rather than making it a projectile he used it as a tall step to leap the last distance to her.</p><p>She spat him hello and dashed the heck away. His axe ripped a gap in the building’s wall even as his shields raved and he made a pained lowing from the intensity of the burn.</p><p>The inordinately strong shield reaction made perfect sense.<em> I’m his weakness.</em></p><p>He wrenched his axe free and charged her, antlers down.</p><p>With her throat charging, she jumped to the burning wood-wall and dash-jumped off, leaping out and over the flume just before the dutiful Sky Claws delivered another log. Elk crashed through the wall he’d planted like it was made of charcoal and jumped after her.</p><p>She landed first and Prominenced high. Elk swung his axe into the log, breaking his jump such that the thermite stream passed under him as he hauled himself up—</p><p>Right into a Fluid Lockdown stream.</p><p>Meteor charged up her Melter once as Elk, flashing and frozen to the log, rode it down and splashed into the flume. He chopped his feet free and leapt backwards just far enough ahead of her thermite to count. The log caught fire and burned as it floated away; the water billowed out steam.</p><p>Separated by the flume and a fair distance, Elk snorted and seemed to reassess through the fresh mist.</p><p>He raised his hand and snapped his fingers.</p><p>Meteor heard a clanging all around the building as four Sky Claws dropped their cargo and buzzed toward her, clamps open. Elk shot a pair of seeds at her to keep the stress up.</p><p>The last place she wanted to be with him was held still. The seeds were slow and easy to spot, so she gave them distance and brought out her beam saber. The Sky Claws were single-minded; a couple of back-and-forth slashes took them out, but took her attention off him too long.</p><p>She looked back, ready to fire, but Elk was far above and beyond her. Three perpendicular wooden platforms jutted out of the wall; he fired another seed and it stuck in place, forming a fourth platform onto which he hopped, just shy of the ceiling.</p><p>He pointed his seed-buster and shot another pair. They were easy enough for Meteor to dodge while keeping her Melter charge held, but his change in tactics concerned her.</p><p>
  <em>The floor is lava and he knows it. This could be over in seconds if he’d just hold still.</em>
</p><p>More Sky Claws buzzed for her.</p><p>A Melter rocket shot from her mouth but Elk side-hopped to a lower step before it hit and volleyed another series of seeds, over and over. He was clearly penning her in, but she had no time to worry as the Sky Claws closed in.</p><p>
  <em>Moving parts, moving parts…</em>
</p><p>She started charging her buster and flashed out her saber again, dismissing the claws. As soon as the charge hit max she aimed up at Elk and let it loose, but an incoming seed takes one for the team, absorbing the flash of plasma and landing behind her to snap-grow into another wall.</p><p>She glanced around, finding herself in the middle of a wooden Stonehenge.</p><p>She heard incoming buzzing again and her fuse burned short.</p><p>Meteor puckered her lips and spat burning glob after burning glob, close and far and as high as she could reach, rapid-firing the payload in her heatproof mouth. Approaching Sky Claws burned in the barrage but not so energetically as the penning walls. More walls appeared to fill the gaps around her from high-arced seeds. The flames spread to them and the smoke occluded her sight, but she knew where Elk waited, so she sidestepped into a remaining gap—</p><p>—right into the path of his spinning axe head.</p><p>Her reflexes weren’t enough. She tried to duck but the surprise projectile carved through her hunched upper back, hit her flashing dorsal fin and careened away at a wild angle.</p><p>Elk followed his axe blad, firing seeds – not at her, but at the last gap and burning walls. They snapped into walls that burned immediately and raised the height of the pen. Meteor was fully fishbowled, engulfed in her element. Her thoughts outraced the flames.</p><p>
  <em>He has me blind.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>How high can he jump?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He expects me to think that.</em>
</p><p>She trusted her instincts and her environment and dashed right up to the flaming walls. She clung for purchase even as he crashed though on a dash that would have impaled her. She dropped down and sprayed his back with white-hot thermite.</p><p>His shields flashed brighter and whiter. He wrenched himself around and swung the haft of his axe – which formed a new chopping head and threw it off as fast as Deco’s fabrication.</p><p>
  <em>Nope.</em>
</p><p>Meteor dashed so low her chest scraped the floor as she followed the inner ring of the burning pen. Elk reformed his axe head and threw it out on a backpedal retreat, but it only clanged in her wake as she answered with her last shot of liquid freeze.</p><p>It coated his legs. He raised his buster.</p><p>Meteor didn’t even need a full charge. A mouth-lobbed Melter grenade cracked into his collar like an egg. The bane of his element ate into his body.</p><p>Elk lolled his head to the Hunter, his shield-flash going from strobe to slowest death-roll blink.</p><p>“Protect… them...”</p><p>Beams of light escaped his failing cell. Cascades of explosions filled his silhouette and Arbor Elk expired in flame.</p><p>Meteor watched him go. It was the least she could do.</p><p>The wood crumbled, its combustive materials spent. Inquisitive Sky Claws puttered over and scooped the char, running on automatic.</p><p>Meteor lowered her head. “Showa to Fifth. Maverick retired.”</p><p>“Copy,” said Atajo. “Postmortem team inbound.”</p><p>“Status on the dropships?”</p><p>“Their cloaking system’s up. No idea. Stay put and we’ll get you a ride back.”</p><p>“Thanks. Is Deco still on the line?”</p><p>“Here,” she piped up. “No further hostiles. I’m returning to base.”</p><p>Meteor regarded the ash as the mechaniloids cleaned it away. They left Elk’s remains alone. “You probably don’t want me to apologize again, do you?”</p><p>“Not a bit, Mimi. See you at home.”</p><p>“Thanks. Showa out.”</p><p>She walked over to the edge of the building and sat beside the top of the flume.</p><p>The green canopy of the forest rolled, indifferent as the sea.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:<br/>“Nationalized Reploids”</p><p>Dr. Cain did not undertake the creation of a new race of sapient beings lightly. Informed by recommendations from leading futurists, psychologists, and X himself, the first reploids were considered <i>employees</i> of CainLabs rather than consumer products. The immense economic and labor advantages this afforded the company made the World Robotics Alliance cry foul, and soon Cain was brought before the United Nations Special Committee on Robotics to help negotiate a solution.</p><p>After extensive international debate, the Treaty of Abel City codified reploids’ initial terms of indentured service while granting them citizenship within their country of origin. For example, a reploid built in Abel City wasn’t a stateless exploited laborer, they were an Irish citizen under a work contract. So too with other signatory states.</p><p>Reploids built under the new paradigm were strongly encouraged to blend into a country’s prevailing society, and many, seeing the appeal of life and humanity and everything in it, quickly accepted. Some reploids, however, felt that they should form their own communities and self-govern. This mode of thought, while always in the minority, grew increasingly popular until the Day of Sigma. The line around “Maverick thinking” was stark and well-enforced by nationalized reploids who had no desire to go the way of the Robot Masters.</p><p>Still, even ostracism and condemnation did not fully eliminate the undercurrent of desire for reploids to live peaceably alone, somewhere outside the reach of humanity, in a community where only reploids existed.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. The Cure for Bad Moods</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meteor gets philosophical during upgrades and speaks with a family member. A sudden, shocking development in the news results in a poor mood for all. To lighten their hearts, Meteor takes her friends to karaoke.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“… Which is when they directed me to the sawmill team,” Meteor explained to her commander in the command room, some hours after returning from the forest.</p><p>“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Turtle stopped recording. “Well done weathering his merry chase.”</p><p>“Could’ve been worse.”</p><p>“Indeed. Your medical report included the word ‘sashimi.’”</p><p>
  <em>Of course it would.</em>
</p><p>“I meant more with Deco.”</p><p>“She was effusive with her praise, no need to worry. The existence of a highly-coordinated team of flying Repliforce officers is troubling, but now we can plan around it. Anything else?”</p><p>“Yes ma’am. About the civilians…”</p><p>Turtle crossed her armored brown-on-white legs at the ankle.</p><p>“Known sympathizers of Repliforce are liable to be treated as Maverick loyalists and face heavy persecution. It’s quite fortunate that none were to be found.”</p><p>Meteor’s eyes widened.</p><p>Turtle kept going. “Records recovered by the Combat Analysis department indicate that the Repliforce cell was using hostages as labor, and took them when they departed. Where-and-whensoever the hostages are recovered, they will be given a psychological screening and re-integrated into society with counselor support – and relocation services, where necessary.”</p><p><em>Whew</em>.</p><p>“Thank you for doing what you can, Commander.”</p><p> </p><p>“They’ve been through a lot, Lieutenant. There’s no need to condemn them all merely for proximity to a Maverick. I’ve transferred your payment. Good work.”</p><p>Meteor couldn’t help but check, right then and there.</p><p>#</p><p>MISSION</p><p>C O M P L E T E</p><p> </p><p>- B-Rank Mission Parameters Complete: 25,000z</p><p>- Repliforce Cell Neutralized: 5,000z</p><p>- Additional Lower-Rank [C] Enemy Officer Engaged [x3]: 10,500z</p><p>- Direct Defense of Allied Officer: 3,000z</p><p>- Disruption of Enemy Supply Line: 3,000z</p><p>- Gratuity, United States Department of Interior: 3,500z</p><p> </p><p>TOTAL: 50,000z</p><p>#</p><p>Meteor nodded approvingly. “Is the pay scale for assisting still the same?”</p><p>“It is.”</p><p>Hunters who accepted a request for their assistance were paid a quarter of the base mission rate but a full match for any contributions and a second quarter for tandem effort in retiring the target. Hunters who <em>requested</em> to assist someone else’s mission got a bonus of another quarter still. Between the request and the Marias and the great service throughout, Deco surely walked away with at least 25,000. Meteor was glad to get her an additional payday.</p><p>The one thing the Hunters didn’t add to combat pay was damage that came from anything but life-risking heroic sacrifice. Repairs, after all, were free of charge and delivered promptly from the best doctors on the planet.</p><p>“How important was the supply line?” Meteor asked.</p><p>“Well, Repliforce’s asset-production flow has been stubbornly durable, and now we know why: they were willing to process cyberwood. Losing a source ought to put them in even direr straits than before.”</p><p>“I see. Thanks, ma’am.”</p><p>“I’m genuinely pleased to see you hitting your old stride again, Meteor, but do remember to take time for yourself.”</p><p>“I will.” She paused a beat. “And you as well.”</p><p>“Pardon?”</p><p>“Take time for yourself too, ma’am. I notice you’ve been as hard at work as I have, just on administration.”</p><p>Turtle’s hawksbill beak curved up at the corner. “Well. I appreciate that. I had in fact planned to sit back and read the Sky Lagoon Commission Report when it’s uploaded tonight.”</p><p>“That sounds like work, ma’am,” Meteor teased, “and I should know.”</p><p>“It’s not work when it comes with a liter of gin, Lieutenant. Dismissed.”</p><p>She had well and truly earned a break, but Meteor being Meteor, there was one place she had to hit before her mission was <em>truly</em> over.</p><p>#</p><p>“Wwwww<em>welcome</em> to Skittle’s Upgrade Emporium!”</p><p>The medical wing’s resident moth-fairy spread their arms and beamed holographic rainbows all over the glory of their finished lab. Meteor hardly recognized the space, barely knew what the medical actuator arms were for, and definitely didn’t know what the racks of exotic tools did.</p><p>“I like what you’ve done with the place.”</p><p>“I know! Isn’t it grand? But what’s best is what I can do to you here!”</p><p>“To?”</p><p>“For. I said for.”</p><p>Meteor walked into what had once been the neighboring cell. “Did you knock down the wall yourself?”</p><p>“Had to, you were already a tight fit and Volt Vanderhuge was tighter, like. Say, you think an electric sheep dreams of himself?”</p><p>“Did you ask him?”</p><p>“Hell no, he’d pluck my wings off soon as look at ‘em, he would. And speaking of plucking,” they flitted to a terminal and cued up the menu, “take your pick!”</p><p>#</p><p>&gt; VWES Options:</p><p>Nice and simple, just like your deer. Deco didn’t have rights to the DNA but I still snuck her a flash-fab template for a spinning axe head, just ‘cause I could. Anyway:</p><p>“Arbor Wall” – Stock weapon. Fires a fat seed pod that snap-grows a mass of cyberwood depending on what it contacts. On contact with a wall or floor or ceiling the pod forms a stiff rectangular monolith (15 x 60 x 135cm), perpendicular to the surface, which will hold your weight. On contact with an enemy body, the seed’ll pop into an equal mass of constricting roots instead, arresting the enemy’s motion and dealing damage by pressure. 12 shots.</p><p>“Arbor Root” – All root, no wall. Tighter squeeze, no instant wall mix. 8 shots.</p><p>“Arbor Barricade” – All wall, no root. 20 x 180 x 180cm square, no squeezy. 8 shots.</p><p>Oh, and: if fired underwater, the seed pod will activate immediately. Be advised: all Arbor-series wood has properties similar to real wood, such as buoyancy and flammability.</p><p> </p><p>&gt; Melee Doodads</p><p>So. I can still stick fire or ice on one of your sabers, but all this wood’s got me thinking…</p><p>“Gaia Sword” – Upon registering sufficiently long contact with a solid surface at a penetrative angle, the blade clicks off and instantly generates a cyberwood stake of half again the blade’s length. The stake exploits the hole or structural weakening made by the stab, deals internal damage with the surprise solid lancing, and then pops right off. 10,000z, same as the other elements.</p><p> </p><p>&gt; Frame Upgrades</p><p>I mean hey, you’ve got enough dosh for one.</p><p>#</p><p>“Hmm,” Meteor hummed. “That saber sounds interesting. I know I wouldn’t see it coming.”</p><p>“I can give it an aesthetic shine too. Green tint, maybe a cosmetic holo wake. How’d you like it to trail sakura petals with every swing?”</p><p>“I think I’d like that. Can you fit it in either saber?”</p><p>“Remember who you’re talkin’ to,” Skittle grinned. “Won’t drain the battery on ‘em any more than regular, but of course the power of the saber sets the power of the candy coating.”</p><p>Meteor handed over her main saber. “Do it for the hi-beam, then.”</p><p>“Roger dodger.”</p><p>“And I’ll take the stock option.”</p><p>“Righty tighty.”</p><p>“And I want to get some more bulk put on. Plate me up.”</p><p>“Excellent rhymes-with-excellent. Figured you might nudge back to your old self.”</p><p>Meteor sat on the repair slab. “Deco doesn’t have any bulk and it almost killed her today. I want at least <em>something</em> in case I fumble. Still a tough decision though.”</p><p>“Body mods always are, no shame in dithering,” Skittle retrieved a bandolier of tools and sagely nodded. “That’ll leave you with five grand.”</p><p>“I’ll keep it. Saving money makes me feel good.”</p><p>Skittle stared in disbelief. Their lips parted.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“I can’t believe you’re so goddamn square you actually put that sentence together in your head and then said it out loud. What’s next, you’re gonna go off to your room all night to pore over that report on Rio?”</p><p>She turned her head a little. “Maybe not all night…”</p><p>“<em>Ha!</em>”</p><p>“<em>Because</em>, Scatter Seelie, I’m meeting the gang at the bar later.”</p><p>Skittle rubbed their hands together. “Oh my stars and garters, what a burden this will be, but as your handler I’m afraid I’ll have to chaperone you to this quaint and exotic – <em>bhaar</em>, you say?”</p><p>“Oh hush, it’s the one you were morning-drinking in.”</p><p>“You’ll have to narrow that down.”</p><p>“Shut up and upgrade me, Skittle.”</p><p>They did. The saber was the easiest part, done in minutes. It took much more time to install Solid Plating frame augmentations, but time was what Meteor had.</p><p>“Hey Skittle?” She asked after a while.</p><p>“Yeah?” They echoed from her lower back as she lay on her front.</p><p>“How seriously do you take your relig—”</p><p>Skittle burst out laughing before Meteor finished the last syllable and continued laughing for ten seconds straight.</p><p>“All right, I get it.”</p><p>“Ho ho hooo no you don’t.” Skittle perched their elbow on her shoulder and tossed a tool to themself over and over. It looked for all the world like a 20<sup>th</sup>-century television remote control. “Mother Church isn’t <em>mine</em>, it’s my parents’s’s. I just keep up with it ‘cause nobody can roughen you with guilt like a Cat-lick and I had <em>six</em> of ‘em lickin’ me over back when.”</p><p>“Come on, you swear by it often enough.”</p><p>“I swear <em>with</em> it, that’s different like.” They pointed the remote at her for emphasis. “I got the right, I do. Come to that, so does any reploid. Vatican Three opened the door and Augustine laid the carpet.” They tap-tapped the remote on Meteor’s forehead. “Gonna convert? I could weld a little <em>ikhthýs</em> on you if you like.”</p><p>“Sorry, I’m too Japanese. All I take from Christians is Santa Claus.”</p><p>Skittle disappeared behind Meteor and went back to work, clanking around inside her back. “There’s my point, yeah? It’s cultural. Reploid-cultural. Copying what our makers do and are, just to fit in. Faith’s not my own, deep down, just a toy to play with when I’m bored and a face to spit in when I’m cross.”</p><p>“Seems deep-down to me.”</p><p>“Well it’s not. Reploids don’t need gods. We’re basically gods already, some of us. Anyway, what brought this on?”</p><p>“Work.” Meteor laid her chin on her forearm. “Sphynx had everything and threw it away for selfish fun. Ostenops was… bitter at the world, justifiably if not condonably. And Elk was just tragic. Maybe if they had a better support system, some real organizational camaraderie, more friends in their lives… they might’ve turned out differently. I dunno, it just got me waxing philosophical.”</p><p>“Well then tell Phil to go wax himself for a while. Get too worried about what could’ve been or build up too much empathy for the dead and you’ll turn into X, you will. That way lies madness. I should know.”</p><p>The largest plate of Meteor’s back, the upper hunch that held her dorsal fin, popped loose. It still had a fresh repair seam where Elk’s axe had carved in. Skittle grabbed the rounded plate by an edge, pulled it off and glanced over her inner anatomy.</p><p>“Christ up a tree, your designers couldn’t save space for shit! I’ll have to move these thermal conduits to make space for the shock dampeners, maybe swap ‘em all out for smaller and higher-density. Bloody fiddly it is.”</p><p>“Rotten work, huh?”</p><p>“Not for me. Not if it’s you.”</p><p>They flew the hull piece to a work table. A Mecha-Arm mechaniloid bolted to the ceiling reached into a fabricator box about Skittle’s height and took out a fresh armor pauldron matching Meteor’s, laying it with plate segments on a different table.</p><p>“There was something else,” said Meteor.</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>She explained at length about her encounter with the Marias. Specifically, how they seemed to know about her older specs.</p><p>“Could there be an intel leak?” She finished.</p><p>“No.” Skittle sounded final. “Internal data security’s clamped tighter than Halcyon’s buttcheeks. Like as not they heard second-hand from the buggerin’ bug what put you down.”</p><p>“Which means he’s still working with Repliforce…”</p><p>“Bastards stick together, they do. Can’t all be loners.”</p><p>The tinkering went on until it was done. Meteor hopped off the slab, feeling heavier than before but in no negative way. With her Flex Architecture parts already installed, she felt… not normal, but upped in capability. Catalyzed. One set of parts supported the other without taking anything away.</p><p>She bounced a little on one leg. “The flex still helps.”</p><p>“It oughta.” Skittle wiped their hands on a convenient pocket rag, not removing residue but actually getting them covered in glitter. “Not only do you have some toughness, but you’re mobile enough to use it right. Welcome to having a choice between eating a hit or not, and walking away from both.”</p><p>“Feels nice. Can you do anything about my dash?”</p><p>“Not yet. Proteus has to clear all my stuff, the miserly old blob. But someday, sure. Now what’s this about a bar?”</p><p>“I’ll catch you there at twenty, okay?”</p><p>“It’s twenty somewhere.”</p><p>“Uh-huh. And when it’s twenty here, I’ll be there.”</p><p>“As you like.” Skittle tugged off their oversized goggles. “Off you go to study up on asphalt density and sewer pipe diameters.”</p><p>They were joking. She knew they were joking. So she kept to herself the fact that one of the books in her queue was about the infrastructure of Victorian London.</p><p>Much higher in her queue, however, was something she had been neglecting.</p><p>Work and socializing and catching up had so dominated her mind that she had put off something vital.</p><p>There were more people than just the Hunters who cared about her.</p><p>#</p><p>At the corner where the 4<sup>th</sup>’s Residential and Medical wings met, a helix of translucent stairs wound around a double elevator shaft to the next floor. Meteor took the stairs, feeling out the new mass of her armor.</p><p>Up in her room, she sat before her simple desk and turned on a screen that beamed up between stacks of genuine organic flowers suspended in blocks of resin. Her desktop icons were as carefully arranged as a rock garden. She tapped and swiped her desk surface – anywhere on the desk would have worked – and called home.</p><p>A happy-looking reploid receptionist blipped into being. Meteor didn’t recognize her.</p><p>“Hello and thank you for contacting Sendai Reliable Underwater Construction! How may I direct you?”</p><p>Being Japanese, the receptionist spoke it. Meteor instantly changed fluencies. Her preferred personal pronoun was the polite and gender-nonspecific <em>watakushi</em>.</p><p>“Hello, I’m a member of the family. Is Doctor Hamasaki in?”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” the receptionist tilted her head sadly, “he is currently attending a conference in Sweden. Is there anyone else I might reach for you?”</p><p>“What about Director Hisakawa?”</p><p>“I’m sorry, but she is currently in a meeting with the mayor. Is there anyone else I might reach for you?”</p><p>“Are my – that is, are any Koi Series workers available?”</p><p>“Let me see.” She typed something. “Ah! Golden Chagoi is on break at the shipyard.”</p><p>“Connect me to him, please.”</p><p>“One moment, please!”</p><p>Meteor waited. Two orange-and-white koi orbited an oil rig on the loading screen.</p><p>“LITTLE SIS!” Meteor’s eldest brother happily boomed, his big solid-orange fish face filling the screen. “And here I thought they broke your hands!”</p><p>“Um?”</p><p>“WHY ELSE wouldn’t you try to call your favorite brother right away, huh?!” He laughed like the Ghost of Christmas Present.</p><p>“You don’t need to hold it so close, Chagoi!” When not using affectionate sibling titles, Meteor and her siblings addressed each other by their koi breed, their second name, on the logic that they were Japanese and should act like it.</p><p>“THE HELL I DON’T!” Chagoi merrily bellowed. “Lets me see you better! Gotta make up for the time I HAVEN’T seen you, huh?!” He laughed again, contagiously.</p><p>“How’s the business going? Mom and Dad are too busy to talk to.”</p><p>“WHAT? Well I’ll give ‘em a piece of my mind! Company’s FINE, FINE, though! Got a new ship weighing out tonight! Bound for Ghana on her FIRST TRIP, how about that!”</p><p>“Bet you’re proud to let her out,” Meteor grinned.</p><p>“WHAT? AND GET HER WET?!” The two siblings laughed at a private in-joke. “But enough about ME! Asagi said some Maverick RUINED you! How’re you getting on, huh?!”</p><p>Meteor explained, skipping the classified bits. Her brother the shipwright exclaimed and laughed all throughout, in pride at this and anger at that. He himself was doing well, Meteor learned when she veered the conversation back on him. He talked about ships like they were his girlfriends. It grounded her, getting her far away from philosophical gloom.</p><p><em>I needed this. Just a stupid bull session with family</em>.</p><p>“BUT ANYWAY, and honestly now, I’m glad you’re safe, Showa. You know how hard we all took Kumonryu.”</p><p>
  <em>… And there’s the existentialism, right back in my face.</em>
</p><p>“Uh-huh,” she diverted, not unkindly. “Well I promise you I’m keeping safe. Even got some upgrades! I’m a lot faster now.”</p><p>“GOOD! WONDERFUL!” The big goof actually patted his datapad, shaking the view of his face like an earthquake. “I should get back to work, but it’s SO GOOD to see you, little sis. You take care now!”</p><p>“Will do, big bro.”</p><p>The monitor blipped back to her artfully-arranged desktop. It took a moment for her mindset to settle back into her body, the thing specced for combat instead of mere salvage and construction.</p><p>
  <em>Who knows whether I can keep that promise…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>No. Enough of that. I’m not drunk enough to dwell yet.</em>
</p><p>She brought up Bustr. Immediately the screen loaded a Breaking News banner. It was better than bait to her. She opened the link; her default source for such events was the English-language ACN. Local time in Abel City was ridiculously early in the morning.</p><p>“…returning now to Geneva,” said an incredibly freckled reploid news anchor. “And, yes, we can now confirm that X is among them, along with elements of the Seventeenth. This is in line with the press release from the Hunters that we received only moments ago, allow me to quote the entire statement again…”</p><p>On screen, a whale-like aircraft landed at an airstrip in high mountains under heavy guard in the air and on the ground.</p><p>“‘The Maverick Hunter Geneva Seventeenth Unit has successfully completed a live capture of Repliforce Major Primus. He is being held in a secure location. With him falls the Repliforce Army, the largest remaining standing force of the organization. Further updates as events warrant.’ Remarkable,” said the newscaster, “just remarkable, today is truly the beginning of the end.” On screen, the world’s most famous reploid, the original model of the entire race, disembarked ahead of a small entourage. “If you’re just joining us, what you see here is a live feed from Geneva, and yes, there’s X, there’s X himself, my word this must be a proud day for the Seventeenth…”</p><p>Meteor smiled, enraptured at history unfolding.</p><p>
  <em>Live capture, huh? That’s so like him.</em>
</p><p>The effusive reporting went on in its own tab as Meteor reopened a Bustr instance. An awful lot of capital letters crossed her feed. There were swaths of image reactions of happy screaming. Live footage of spontaneous street celebrations. Several uses of the Repliforce “R” edited into an “R.I.P.” She reshot a few of them and composed a brief shot of her own via instant mental-text.</p><p>“This is a good day, everybody, one of those good days that’ll get better the longer we live. Once again X has showed us all how it’s done. I don’t like making predictions, but here’s one anyway: this is capital-I Important, and we’d all better appreciate it. No matter where this leads, it’s starting here. I love days like this. It’s like hearing the delays in thunder that tell you the storm’s moving away.”</p><p>She added a cycling animation of a stormy sky from one of the Discworld movies and continued steeping herself in the news.</p><p>Good news had been a rare treasure indeed, that year.</p><p>#</p><p>The Eighth Hour bustled in celebration of the news that no monitor carried. A Spinner Disc tournament played on the screen above the bar, Chinese basketball played around the sides, and cricket played for the ardent devotees in the corner.</p><p>Skittle stared into the middle distance at the bar, a pair of filled tumbler glasses by them surprisingly left untouched.</p><p>Deco and Nouveau occupied a small table further in and were in the process of arguing about basketball.</p><p>“Oh, please, Jiang is a classless lout,” said Nouveau.</p><p>“Not <em>that</em> Jiang, the one who was traded from the Pheasants!”</p><p>“Well specify next time!” Nouveau flipped his hair. “Seelie! Where are those drinks?”</p><p>“Just a minute, Legolas, I’m shitposting about Primus.”</p><p>“Is it about his idiotic beard?” He turned half around. “Showa! Tell your handler to handle our order already.”</p><p>“It’s right there, Captain,” Meteor gestured to the bar. She and Volt took up both sides of a neighboring booth.</p><p>“Oh you <em>fiend!</em>” Nouveau laughed like Corona Sphynx. “Denying your superior officer? This is the thanks I get for keeping you from the taxing responsibilities of Second in Command? Batteram! Fetch the fairy’s hoard for us, won’t you?”</p><p>Volt, his eyes on a basketball game, sipped a Provençal rosé older than any reploid and subtly steamed its vapor out his nose. “No.”</p><p>“Good call,” Deco stage-whispered, “he’s had enough already.”</p><p>“Not nearly!” He objected. “Still yet to try a concoction I call a Relief From Duty!”</p><p>Meteor scooted out to retrieve the drinks on the reasonable assumption that nobody else would. “Really?” She asked. “What’s in it?”</p><p>“Everything, mixed internally!”</p><p>Nouveau laughed and hug-leaned into his sister, radiating the sillier side of himself that Meteor hadn’t seen in months. Deco covered her mouth with her loose knuckles and giggled. Meteor envied them.</p><p>“<em>Holy shit!</em>” Skittle exclaimed, kicking back from their barstool so fast it fell over. Meteor caught it in time. Bravo Four added a daiquiri to the order as she arrived.</p><p>“What?” Meteor scooped up the glasses. “What’s up?”</p><p>Skittle was lost to the world, their eyes fixed in space but their eyelids subtly twitching. “Oh god, oh god…”</p><p>“I have a pretty good imagination to fill in ‘oh god oh god,’” Meteor smirked, carrying her friends’ drinks over.</p><p>“Bet there’s a sale on bulk glitter,” Deco tittered.</p><p>“Or corkboards,” Volt added, dryly.</p><p>“Will you <em>shut up</em> for <em>one goddamn second</em> and check the news?!” Skittle roared.</p><p>The outburst drew attention from the whole room, some curious and some annoyed. A basketball team scored a three-pointer and the patrons groaned louder than the televised crowd cheered, some visibly angry that they missed it.</p><p>Meteor delivered the drinks while opening a new HUD tab. Bustr was alight with activity, but in the annoyingly vague way of everyone reacting in shock to the same thing under the assumption that anyone reading already knew what it was. She moved to her news aggregator as she sat back down; a video at the top auto-played. The President of Brazil, a brown man indoors at a podium before a row of flags, seemed to be gesturing for order over an unruly crowd of journalists.</p><p>“And as a result – please, if you could settle – my friends, if you could—”</p><p>Deco, Nouveau, and Volt shared the same glassy-eyed look as Meteor. She opened a third tab of perception and hit a waterfall of chilling headlines.</p><p>#</p><p>&gt; BRASILIA: LIVE UPDATES: COMMISSION REVEALS MAVERICK DROPPED SKY LAGOON</p><p>&gt; BREAKING: SLC: REPLIFORCE NOT RESPONSIBLE</p><p>&gt; SKY LAGOON COMMISSION EXONERATES REPLIFORCE</p><p>&gt; RIO DE JANEIRO DESTROYED BY LONE MAVERICK, NOT REPLIFORCE, COMMISSION REPORTS</p><p>&gt; ABEL CITY ERUPTS IN RIOTS</p><p>&gt; SKY LAGOON DROPPED BY “RETIRED MAVERICK MAGMA DRAGOON,” SAYS SILVA</p><p>&gt; PRESIDENT SILVA: “IT WAS NOT REPLIFORCE”</p><p>&gt; MAGMA DRAGOON, MAVERICK, IMPLICATED BY SLC REPORT</p><p>&gt; TOKYO 14<sup>TH</sup> UNIT COMMANDER RESIGNS OVER SLC REVELATIONS</p><p>&gt; HALCYON “UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT”</p><p>#</p><p>Meteor stood dumbly by the booth. She felt the silent reorientation of the world taking a surprise turn at a fork in history. Her senses fell away like the easier future that she never knew could be lost – that no one credible had ever entertained could be possible.</p><p>
  <em>What have we done?</em>
</p><p>Skittle airdashed clear out of the bar.</p><p>“Hey!” Meteor gave chase.</p><p>Deco blinked her attention back to the reality tab. “Wait, Mimi!”</p><p>“I’ll be right back!”</p><p>Meteor ran. Fortunately the trail was easy to track. Glitter floated in the air.</p><p>She found Skittle just outside in the rim of the Courtyard, holding their head and hyperventilating.</p><p>“No, no, no, no…”</p><p>“Skittle. Hey.”</p><p>They pivoted away to keep their back to her. “Sky Lagoon Commission Report, page six. ‘Forensic evidence is consistent with quietly-archived Maverick Hunter data.’ Quietly. Archived. We knew. We knew we knew we knew we <em>knew</em>, but we kept going ‘cause <em>they</em> kept going ‘cause we went off and labeled them Mavericks and all this, all of it, the lies, the war, the death, three million seven hundred ninety thousand nine hundred forty and that was just in Rio, Repliforce set us back I dunno <em>how</em> many decades and, and it… it was all just…”</p><p>Still fluttering in place, they dipped forward and held their forehead. Meteor stepped around to face them.</p><p>Scatter Seelie was crying. Meteor knew of only one other reploid in the world capable of shedding tears.</p><p>“What were we fighting for?” They squeaked.</p><p>Meteor pulled her friend in for a hug. They allowed it. Her arms wrapped under their wing-joint backpack but it took a moment for the wings to quit beating. The four-foot fairy weighed next to nothing, compared to her.</p><p>She wanted to give a speech. Something about defending the innocent, something about serving the world, anything to justify the catastrophic war. It all sounded hollow in her head.</p><p>Meteor let the silence and the contact be her answer.</p><p>At length Skittle stirred under the hug. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“For what?”</p><p>“Me.”</p><p>“Don’t be.”</p><p>“Violence is the only language these people understand. What am I doing here?”</p><p>“The best you can.”</p><p>Skittle laid their head on her shoulder. Meteor held them there. A few moments passed before they extracted themself from her arms.</p><p>“Not out here I’m not.”</p><p>The Eighth Hour was quieter when Meteor and Skittle returned, for a given value of quiet. The sports games were still on and high-volume, not a single one switched to news, but every mouth was shut and every eye not on a pad or in its own world was watching a screen.</p><p>Bravo had his back turned to it all, fastidiously cleaning anything that broke his line of sight. Meteor couldn’t imagine what he was going through. Or the other Standard Berets…</p><p>Deco traced her fingertip around the rim of her glass. Nouveau sat with his head in his hands. Volt was a seated statue, his glass still half full. Skittle hovered to the siblings’ table as Meteor returned to her seat.</p><p>“You know where I used to work?” Skittle asked no one in particular, interrupting the heavy silence.</p><p>“A theme park,” Meteor replied. “You were a mascot.”</p><p>“You know what my best, my <em>super</em> best day was?”</p><p>“When you got fired,” she answered, giving the other three a look that said she’d heard it all before.</p><p>“You know how I <em>got</em> fired?”</p><p>“You were talking to a boy about death instead of carrying on with a birthday party.”</p><p>Skittle smiled at something light-years away. “Boy of nine. His parents died just that week. He was gonna head to the funeral that very night but didn’t wanna miss his friend’s big one-oh. Standard kids’ light show, bit of juggling, bit of holo work. He started crying out of nowhere. I stopped the act cold and asked him why. He told me. I took him aside, talked him through it, left him smiling. Some rich mum helicopterin’ her brat said stopping the show was <em>in-a-pro-pry-ate</em>. And of course I was on thin ice to begin with, what with my…” they rolled their wrist, “<em>me</em>. But it was the best thing I ever did, it was. I made that child smile in a world that tries every blessed hour to get rid of every reason to.”</p><p>Somehow or other the story broke a spell. Deco, Nouveau, Volt, and Meteor drank their drinks. The sugar in Meteor’s didn’t fit the mood.</p><p>“I envy humans, y’know,” Skittle went on.</p><p>“Do you?” Asked Deco, politely.</p><p>“Ain’t stuttering yet, am I?” Skittle knocked on the bar. Bravo wordlessly withdrew an immaculately dusted shot glass, nanomachine vial, and bottle of fireball whiskey, which Skittle quickly snatched out of his hands. “Humans are… they just <em>are</em>. Unlike them, we know what we’re <em>for</em>.” They unscrewed the bottle, popped the vial and poured the whole thing in. “Which means when we screw up or are found wanting it’s not just a mistake, it’s a wrong against existence, an <em>anti-function</em>, like a chocolate teakettle.”</p><p>“Now that’s not true,” said Deco. “We’re no different, us and humans.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Skittle countered, refilling the siblings’ glasses and pouring one for themself, “except we’d be immortal if we could only stop killing each other. Nature makes humans too empty. They wither. Humans make reploids too full. We pop off. Between the two I don’t think there’s a single stable sapient <em>on</em> this wet ball of ashes.”</p><p>“Getting dark, Skittle,” Meteor warned.</p><p>“No I’m not, I’m workin’ up to a point here. So <em>because</em> we’re like that, so full, we feel everything <em>more</em>. It’d be great to feel <em>less</em>. To be able to forget, like? To move on? <em>Without</em> getting sauced first? That’d be sweet. That’d…” they sniffled, and Meteor wondered how far their facial endoconstruction went. “That’d be real sweet, it would. But we can’t. Everybody feels everything. All the time. And we do it just because. No <em>function</em> for that. It just is.”</p><p>They knocked back their entire drink in one go. In the time it took to process, Meteor noted the silence in the other bar patrons seemed to have turned attentive. Volt in particular looked directly at Skittle.</p><p>Skittle continued, venting alcohol vapor with every word, “Maybe if Repliforce wasn’t so proud of knowing their <em>function</em>, knowing what they <em>were for</em>, they wouldn’t’ve popped off at the first bell like Mavericks and woulda been satisfied just putterin’ around like humans. Like <em>people</em>. Like <em>us</em>. People living for the sake of <em>living</em>, not just in service to the user manual. People doing the best we can.” Skittle grabbed the bottle and raised it high. “To doing!”</p><p>“To doing,” Meteor toasted.</p><p>Volt silently raised his glass. Deco and Nouveau tapped the bottoms of their glasses together.</p><p>Televised audiences cheered. The rowdier cricket fans cautiously edged some jubilation back into the atmosphere with loud claps and approving noises. That seemed to finish breaking the spell; Meteor heard shuffling and settling all around the room, under the sports commenting. Conversation started back up.</p><p>Everyone knew what had happened, Meteor realized, but for Maverick Hunters fresh off a war, life went on. Each of them had surely heard worse news that month. They wouldn’t have been sitting there if they hadn’t found ways to cope, public and private.</p><p>Deco slammed her fists on the table. Meteor sputtered; Nouveau and Skittle startle-jumped like she had shot at them.</p><p>“Brother. Mimi. Volt. Skittle. Stand your butts up and follow me.”</p><p>“What? Why?” Meteor asked.</p><p>Deco stood out of her seat. “Because we’re <em>doing!</em> We are going to do something fun and silly until we feel better, and I won’t hear otherwise.”</p><p>“What’s gotten into you?” Nouveau blinked hard.</p><p>“I refuse to sit here and wallow, Brother, I’m saving this night!”</p><p>“But with what?”</p><p>Deco opened her mouth. Deco closed her mouth.</p><p>“Mimi? Little help?”</p><p>“You’re asking <em>her</em> for fun ideas?” Skittle machine-gun chuckled through the question. “What’s she gonna do, have us build model kits of History’s Great Pedestrian Crosswalks?”</p><p>Meteor compiled the first “fun and silly” things that came to mind… and then edited out the ones her friends might not have found exciting. The list was small.</p><p>She looked at Deco, drained the rest of her daiquiri and planted it on the table with what she hoped was great drama.</p><p>“Okay. There’s an ancient Japanese bonding ritual…”</p><p>“Is it karaoke?”</p><p>“It’s karaoke.”</p><p>“But we’d have to go offsite for that!” Nouveau objected.</p><p>“No we wouldn’t! You ever been to the Depth Charge?”</p><p>“What, the <em>Sixth</em> bar?” Nouveau didn’t try to hide his disgust.</p><p>“The very same, Captain! They have a bunch of karaoke rooms in back! I’ve tested each one, I’ll have you know!”</p><p>“Oh now this I gotta witness,” Skittle’s eyes lit up, almost literally.</p><p>“Then let’s go!” Deco pointed for the door, out drama-ing her brother. “The Fellowship of the Fun!”</p><p>“Not yet we don’t!” Nouveau scrambled to his feet. “I have to clear this with Turtle, I’m certain she’ll be against it!”</p><p>“Here, I’ll call her,” said Meteor.</p><p>“Lieutenant!”</p><p>“Already called.”</p><p>“Then break contact!”</p><p>“Yes?” Minefield Turtle responded in her ear.</p><p>“Boss! Turtle! How are you!”</p><p>“Commander!” Nouveau clapped his earcap. “Lieutenant Showa has some ridiculous idea that—”</p><p>“We’re hitting Sixth for karaoke, wanna come?”</p><p>“<em>Lieutenant!</em>”</p><p>“Immediately, I take it?” Turtle responded.</p><p>“Right away, Commander!” She piped up.</p><p>“Commander I apologize for her behavior,” Nouveau interjected, “I know with current events this is hardly the time.”</p><p>“Permission granted.”</p><p>“What?!” Nouveau’s face fell.</p><p>“Furthermore, Captain, I am ordering you to accompany this away party and record all proceedings for public scrutiny. And also to participate. Turtle out.”</p><p>Meteor and Deco looked at each other, their smiles spreading at the same dawning rate.</p><p>#</p><p>The Veracruz Sixth Marine Armada Unit had the run of the waterfront. The Depth Charge comprised its own building where the docks ended.</p><p>Meteor threw wide the doors, in that the doors threw themselves open at her approach.</p><p>“<em>Overland has come for your music!</em>” She bellowed. “Surrender your karaokes!”</p><p>A few regulars raised a generic cheer in her favor.</p><p>The culture of the Depth Charge was a little different from the Eighth Hour, the atmosphere being more “club” than “sports bar.” The Sixth, the base’s busiest and arguably most disciplined unit, valued unwinding. Music thrummed. Laughter echoed. There was even a dance floor, pumping out rhythms. Enlisted and officers alike danced poorly, waving limbs and swaying bodies to forget their problems.</p><p>Despite Meteor’s dramatic proclamation, all units were always welcome there. At a glance she spotted Sol Saguaro of 1<sup>st</sup> Advance and Hundred Honeypot of 3<sup>rd</sup> Deploy. Even Base Commander Chrono Sloth was there, occupying a corner booth. All of it. The twelve-foot mountain of brown and white bulk sat back with a relaxed, approving air, resting his long arms over the top of the booth like the back of a couch. He held a shot glass between two claws, a ridiculously tiny thing in his grip.</p><p>Meteor waved to her commander’s commander; he inclined his head a fraction of a degree and returned to people-watching. In her experience, Sloth made Volt look like Skittle.</p><p>“Big place,” Volt remarked.</p><p>“Oh look, dancing!” Deco clapped.</p><p>“How delightful,” Nouveau groaned. He suddenly gasped and positioned himself behind Meteor. “Quickly, find a room, there’s that insufferable seal at the bar.”</p><p>“Oh hey, you’re right!” Meteor cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hey Laser! Laser Focalizar!”</p><p>“<em>This is insubordination!</em>” Nouveau hissed.</p><p>Focalizar, the leopard seal with monocle-scope eyes, raised a glass her way. “Showa! Good to see you again! Just got out of room three, help yourself.”</p><p>“Thanks!”</p><p>“Friend of yours?” Asked Deco.</p><p>“Helped me take down a Class S, once. Same as this guy,” she reached back and knuckle-tapped Volt on the chest. He allowed it.</p><p>Meteor led her party through the beating heart of HQ2’s responsible nightlife. The architecture held a lot of curves and steel as though everything but the chairs was recycled from submarines.</p><p>She took her friends into an unoccupied karaoke room and marched right to the mic.</p><p>“Ooh, ex-Captain on deck,” Skittle settled into a wing-fluttering recline a few feet above the couch.</p><p>“You’re darn right I am! And I was a Captain even before this guy!” She thumbed at Nouveau, who sat at the edge in a huff. “You’re recording, right?”</p><p>“Every moment,” Nouveau tapped his circlet. The gem in the center caught the light.</p><p>“Excellent. Deco!”</p><p>“Ma’am!” She saluted.</p><p>“Order up some liquid news-forgetting, my treat. Volt!”</p><p>“Mm?”</p><p>“Come pick a song for me.”</p><p>“Mm.”</p><p>“Skittle!”</p><p>“Yes’m?”</p><p>“Give us some better light.”</p><p>They rolled over, flew up and palmed the ceiling lamp. Four copies of the lamp projected around it, each dazzling.</p><p>Volt skimmed the lists of genres and songs by decade, year, and country. “Preference?”</p><p>“Doesn’t matter.”</p><p>“Think it does.”</p><p>“All right, jay-pop. But make it harder, do an English cover.”</p><p>“Got it.”</p><p>“What is it, then?” Skittle flitted down to actually sit on the couch, leaving their light projections in place.</p><p>“You’ll see,” said Volt.</p><p>Meteor gathered herself and hit Play. The intro started up with bright and welcoming synthesizers. She grinned at Volt as the lyrics awaited their cue in her mind. Volt gave her a stoic look that poorly hid a <em>you asked for it</em> twinkle in his eye.</p><p>Deco perked up with the menu pad in hand. “I know this one! <em>Unbeatable Love!</em>”</p><p>“Our age, isn’t it?” Nouveau’s eyebrows admitted to interest.</p><p>“Just about. I remember Mom and Mum and Nan would play it when—”</p><p>“Shuhshhshh!” Skittle shushed through the opening guitar riff. Meteor began.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>WHY, is it that these thorns of love pierce deep into my heart?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>WHY, is it that they’re sharpest when we dare to drift apart?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Bit by bit,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>even if the pain makes my inward heart open up like a rose</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’m so scared,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>of the trembling feelings that the truth cannot help but show</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’m breaking down inside...</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’m breaking down inside...</em>
</p><p> </p><p>“She hums this sometimes,” Skittle whispered over the drum bridge. Meteor played up the performance, playfully reaching out to Skittle and withdrawing her hand for the first pair of lines and copied the motion for Deco on the second:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>More than embracing every part of me,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>make an effort to understand</em>
</p><p>
  <em>More than the kindness that you give to me,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I, want all the strength, to overcome my loneliness if I can!</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Meteor pressed her delivery stronger than the original singer.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>I know that my yearned-for love,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>must surely lie unbeatable somewhere inside of me</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I know if I find that love</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ll finally discover what you always claimed to see</em>
</p><p>
  <em>So no matter how our story goes</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ll defy the fates against my hope</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Let me believe... in my inner streeeeength!</em>
</p><p> </p><p>“Woo!” Deco applauded and Skittle joined in. Nouveau golf-clapped. Volt sat and smirked, waiting. The music kept going.</p><p>“There’s a second verse?” Nouveau squinted.</p><p>“Of course there is,” Deco sat forward, “this isn’t some anime intro!”</p><p>Meteor bit off her chuckle and caught the next verse right on the beat:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>WHY, do all of our evils come, from blissful innocence?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>WHY, make so many victims of, our crimes of ignorance?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Emotions,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>always complicate worries that I try casually to outpace…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>So I try,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>in irrelevant stories to excuse all I can’t erase!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I merely run away...</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I merely run away...</em>
</p><p> </p><p>“Best part right here,” Skittle whispered again. Meteor once again played up her audience, reaching-and-withdrawing first to Nouveau and finally to Volt:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>If you want to console and comfort me,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I want you to chastise and scold</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If you want to forgive and welcome me,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I, want in my dreams, all of the brokenness I left in the cold!</em>
</p><p> </p><p>For the refrain she unloaded all the stage gestures she had kept in her proverbial back pocket:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>I know that my yearned-for love,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>must surely lie unbeatable somewhere inside of me</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I know if I find that love</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ll finally discover what you always claimed to see</em>
</p><p>
  <em>So no matter how our story goes</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ll defy the fates against my hope</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Let me believe… in my inner streeeeength!</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The music built to a finish and her friends hung on every note.</p><p>Meteor knocked the final refrain out of the park.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>I know that my yearned-for love,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>must surely lie unbeatable somewhere inside of me</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I know if I find that love</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ll finally discover what you always claimed to see</em>
</p><p>
  <em>So no matter how our story goes</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ll defy the fates against my hope</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Let me believe… in my inner STREEEEEENGTH!</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Her friends stood up and applauded. Deco whooped, Skittle cheer-laughed, Nouveau respectfully clapped with a thin smile, and Volt slow-clapped, nodding in approval.</p><p>Grinning like a fool, she held out the mic to Nouveau.</p><p>He fixed her with a doom glare and shook his head. “Don’t you dare.”</p><p>Deco started a chant. “Nou-veau, Nou-veau…”</p><p>“Stop that!”</p><p>“C’mon, Tauriel,” Skittle taunted, “pull the malinornë out your arse and let your hair down.”</p><p>The door pinged. Meteor tossed the mic on the couch and answered it. A reploid in a sailor suit passed her a tray of bottles. “Anything else, ma’am, you let us know!”</p><p>“Thanks!” She checked the labels. “Who had the peach brandy?”</p><p>Deco automatically finger-gunned at Nouveau, who raised his hand.</p><p>“Drinks are for singers, Captain.”</p><p>He fixed her with an I’ll-get-you-later look, which before her eyes melted into an I-hate-that-I-like-this look.</p><p>He snatched the mic off the cushions, to encouragement from the others. He selected something after a moment of searching and a longer moment of deliberation.</p><p>“Laugh and you’re cleaning windows, fairy.”</p><p>“No promises, elf.”</p><p>Without further preamble, Nouveau started into a slow and gentle 21st-century New Age ballad.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Pilgrim, how you journey</em>
</p><p>
  <em>on the road you chose…</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Skittle snarked a little. Deco swiftly covered their mouth. Meteor’s and Volt’s merely dropped open.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>To find out why the winds die</em>
</p><p>
  <em>and where the stories go…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>All days come from one day</em>
</p><p>
  <em>that much you must know…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>you cannot change what’s over</em>
</p><p>
  <em>but only where you go…</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Skittle waved their hand and softened the lighting. Meteor kept listening. It was arresting, hearing such a tender sound from someone like him.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>One way leads to diamonds,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>one way leads to gold,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>another leads you only</em>
</p><p>
  <em>to everything you’re told…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>In your heart you wonder</em>
</p><p>
  <em>which of these is true:</em>
</p><p>
  <em>the road that leads to nowhere,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>the road that leads to you…</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Will you find the answer</em>
</p><p>
  <em>in all you say and do?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Will you find the answer</em>
</p><p>
  <em>in you? …</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He continued, and Meteor listened to every word. When he finished, she was the first one up and clapping.</p><p>“Gosh, Nouveau, that was beautiful!”</p><p>“If you like sap,” Skittle stage-muttered into their scotch. Deco tipped their glass back and they sputtered on it.</p><p>“Which I do,” Nouveau curtly replied, underhand-flicking the mic at his growing nemesis and opening his bottle. “Let’s see you do better.”</p><p>“Oh ho ho, hold onto your hairplugs, boyo…”</p><p>Skittle spent no time at all selecting their song. The lighting turned stark and moody. Their song started quickly; despite the bubbly energy of their usual voice, their singing voice was more strident and powerful than a column of ride chasers.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>STOP! Be quiet now!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Out with the light and</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Then up and DOOOWN IIIIT GOOOOES!! ...</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Deco did a little bounce-along in her seat when they hit the loudest lines. Nouveau sat still, legs crossed at the knee, nearly imperceptibly bobbing his head. Meteor just sat back and enjoyed; she could have sworn she saw Volt mouthing a couple lines.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>What is it like? You, ask me my dear</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Will there be fairies, or things to fear? </em>
</p><p>
  <em>For fairies’ sake I’d say you better come with me—</em>
</p><p>
  <em>So soon you’ll see—</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Now up and down it goes and round</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Round and round, and, round</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Skittle spread their fingers and planted them on their chest, shimmering out into holographic quadruplicate.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Praise my cleverness</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They all follow me</em>
</p><p>
  <em>All praise to innocence</em>
</p><p>
  <em>That’s everything it neeeeeds! </em>
</p><p>
  <em>FLY IN—</em>
</p><p>
  <em>FLY OUT—</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They’ll leave it all BEHIIIIIND!!</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The night went on, not nearly long enough.</p><p>Deco’s first song? Meteor could hardly remember, as she swayed back to her quarters. Something about a dirty computer. Everything after that… somewhere in there she thought she remembered Volt bringing down the house with the new single from J-Rock star Magnitude Ten, but her head was still ringing.</p><p>All she could be certain of was that it was time well spent. Dark times were what partying was <em>for</em>.</p><p>She made it back to her room and even succeeded in the arduous journey to her bed slab. She entered a wakeup time and was lost to the world before her hand slipped off the input pad.</p><p>#</p><p>Morning came on time. <em>How dare it.</em></p><p>Meteor checked her Bustr account with the text-telepathy equivalent of a bleary squint. Even the overlong rest had yet to knock out 100% of the hangover.</p><p>Nouveau – [@silmaril777] – was aiming her, finally. It seemed like everybody in the 4<sup>th</sup> had commented on the karaoke recording. Among them:</p><p>[@soundofthunder]</p><p>Good time.</p><p>[@Decorative]</p><p>You were amazing Mimi!</p><p>[@TasteTheRainbow]</p><p>(USER SUSPENDED FOR CIRCUMVENTING SUSPENSION)</p><p>[@Minefield_Turtle]</p><p>Well done, Captain. Lieutenants. I would suggest songs for your next outing, but none of my favorites have lyrics.</p><p>[@sweetbasil90]</p><p>You should take me and Fram along! We’re great at yelling!</p><p>[@Razzburier &gt;@sweetbasil90]</p><p>Don’t bring us, ever. It’s for your own safety. Alba’s into death metal.</p><p>[@snowflurry21XX]</p><p>Don’t invite me either unless you really, REALLY like Country.</p><p>[@butterfly-net370]</p><p>needed more skittle</p><p>#</p><p>“Country, huh?” Meteor asked Flurry in person an hour later. Flurry was arranging test-fire weapon racks. A large number of enlisted filled each of the target lanes with hungover aim.</p><p>“You don’t want to start with me,” said Flurry, “I’ll get evangelic about how Shirley Whitesmith is the reincarnation of Reba.”</p><p>“I don’t know either of them.”</p><p>“Hang around me some more and you will. Thompson, though, he’s into classic Norteño. Takes all kinds. Anyway, you here to sim?”</p><p>“Sure am. I tried getting a lane from Thompson but they’re all full.”</p><p>“Yeah, the news about Sky Lagoon has everybody angry. For some reason.” A Chrysoprase down the way fired a missile launcher at a distant target. The explosion cast shadows. “Right this way.”</p><p>Meteor followed her into the sim room, found an unoccupied pod, and soon found herself back in the world of zero consequences.</p><p>“Who’ll it be?” Flurry asked.</p><p>“Just a couple green Vics, thanks. R-series.”</p><p>They appeared, side by side. Meteor opened with Fluid Lockdown and deliberately splashed the floor with it three times. The Victoroids glanced at the ice patch and shot at her as she ran up and slid over it. She engaged her dash halfway across and practically flew into them.</p><p>Her new Gaia Sword swept through the left sim-mechaniloid’s chest, trailing holographic cherry blossoms. Throwing her full power behind it made the cut too fast to engage the stake. She went for a thrust instead, the saber went in, and all at once the plasma quit, replaced with a longer stake that pierced into the sim’s LIFE cell and started its fatal explosions.</p><p>The Vic’s partner didn’t like that, tackling her at speed back over her own ice patch, but her heels dig in once they hit frictionable ground. She swapped to Arbor Wall and seeded her foe; the seed landed and erupted into a wooden octopus grip. It still had its buster up, but she fired a Wall seed into the ground and it burst into a barrier to absorb the hit.</p><p>Meteor ducked around it, thermited the grasping wood and watched the Victoroid expire in a conflagration.</p><p>“Nice,” she said.</p><p>“Done already?” Flurry asked.</p><p>“Yep, just wanted a quick shakedown.”</p><p>“Well there it is. Good to see whoever you took down didn’t just have a Shotgun Ice derivative.”</p><p>“Is it bad if he did?”</p><p>“No, just common. It’s like going to a three-star restaurant and only eating bread.” Flurry paused. “Or so I’m told.”</p><p>“I’ll look for some bread-scented candles for your birthday, how’s that?”</p><p>“Pantastic.”</p><p>#</p><p>Meteor was still snickering at that pun when she arrived in the command room. Turtle was there, every subsection of the back-wall monitor tuned to news feeds.</p><p>“Commander.”</p><p>“Lieutenant.”</p><p>“Something new happen?”</p><p>“Oh, repercussions from last night.” She rested her cheek on her fist. “Civil unrest here and there, particularly in Abel City. I may be called away, but let’s both hope it doesn’t come to that.”</p><p>“Yes ma’am.” Meteor headed to a terminal, reached out to it…</p><p>“Do you think he died in vain, Lieutenant?”</p><p>Her hand froze. “Excuse me?”</p><p>“Jaguar. <em>Commander</em> Jaguar.” Turtle’s lean didn’t change. “He would still be with us if not for Colonel, if not for Repliforce, if not for Dragoon, if not for this… catastrophic failure of imagination. For want of a nail, et cetera, et cetera… oh, never mind me.”</p><p><em>The heck I will</em>.</p><p>Meteor walked to her commander – her friend, too. “He didn’t die in vain, Turtle. I’ve never met somebody with such a grasp of context in the field. Nobody else could’ve delayed Colonel like he did and he knew it. But more than that,” she rested her hand on Turtle’s shell, “he knew you were guarding the waters. If he hadn’t baited Colonel towards him, you would’ve engaged him first. He had such great faith in your leadership, he didn’t want to let us lose you too.”</p><p>Turtle stared at the frankly unhealthy amount of news feeds. She reached up and patted Meteor’s hand.</p><p>“Forgive me, Showa. As you were.”</p><p>“Yes ma’am.”</p><p>
  <em>I’m definitely bringing her along next time.</em>
</p><p>Meteor returned to the terminal and selected the last Maverick on her roster: pollution vector Liege Iteratton.</p><p>
  <em>Time to play pest control.</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:<br/>“Reploid Culture”</p><p>Having found themselves at the tip of a very long recorded history, reploids’ ad-hoc cultural studies inevitably drew inspiration and favorable pursuits from works of recent centuries – which contemporary humans consider outdated if not historical. The early film Casablanca is a perennial reploid favorite, for example, as is the band Guns and Roses. Ironically, reploid artists working in the most contemporary modes of expression have more human fans than reploid fans.</p><p>Additionally, reploids know they arrived on the world stage during a period of acute climate irregularity and mass extinction (knowledge reinforced by so many designers modeling specialized reploids after animals). They therefore tend to have strong environmentalist sympathies and lead resource-efficient lives, knowing as they do that they have inherited Earth for a far longer time than any given human.</p><p>That is not to imply that reploid culture is repressed, of course. Social intoxication is a pastime for those capable of it. Dancing is as popular as music. Sports are also popular, though reploid-league sports are more about tactics and accuracy than physical prowess or endurance.</p><p>Finally, specialized endoconstruction can allow reploids to engage in sexual activity. This is rare, however – and not simply because the Treaty of Abel City’s prohibition on primary sex characteristics in design or construction phases requires interested reploids to seek custom, tailored hardware at exorbitant cost. It is more because reploids lack hormones. They can develop an anthropological interest in sex or even participate in it for the gratification of a human partner, but they can never understand the lived experience of chemically-induced motivation or pleasurable autonomic muscle spasms. Reploid culture, therefore, is asexual-normative.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Mission 4: Liege Iteratton</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meteor hunts a maniacal rat king through a dangerously polluted farm. The Maverick's body-jacking drones send the dead against her.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A white and black and red-orange column of warped space shot from the sky and deposited Meteor on a pad outside of a post office, a polymerized-brick relic from a hundred years prior. It was the largest non-agricultural building in sight. Her GPS told her she had landed safely in Golden, Oklahoma, population five hundred ten.</p><p>The town appeared abandoned, and she could guess why: the clouds over her head were stringy and gray like a patch of evil cirrus, turning the sun into a soft and sickly circle. Two grand vertical-farming towers stood in the distance, each a stack of twelve progressively smaller hexagonal bowls held together with outer ribs and connected by a skybridge at bowl six. The top two bowls steamed like cauldrons, wisping hazy white smoke that fed the gray at higher altitude.</p><p>“Showa to Fifth.”</p><p>“Yeee~o, Fifth on call,” Atajo chimed in.</p><p>“I’m on-site. Anybody here I should meet?”</p><p>“Nope. None left of the Chrysoprases from the Columbus Fourth that came before you. This was actually their mission first, as your Mav was historically a Class C. Now the whole squad, all five of them, are dead, near as we can tell. Their last report suggested body-jacking. No pressure, right?”</p><p>“Right…” The enthrallment bothered her. She’d fought Mavericks who had that trick before, so once again she had left mechaniloid assistance at home to deny her target any new weapons. “Any civilians?”</p><p>“They all evacuated to Broken Bow, mostly humans. There weren’t many since most of them worked at that farm, but most have come down with serious respiratory problems.”</p><p>“What exactly is the rat burning?”</p><p>“Bad stuff. Air samples show benzene, fine-particulate mercury, chlorine-heavy dioxins, even some perchloroethylene. No telling what he’s put in the crops or groundwater yet. On top of that, BioCom’s good old sky-cleaners are making things worse.”</p><p>“Black Skies,” Meteor muttered. The twenty-first century’s best-intentioned disaster. Trillions of transparent microorganisms still lingered quite literally overhead and would possibly drift the atmosphere forever, just waiting for heavy industrial pollution to eat. Whenever they did, they bloomed like airborne algae, died off, and occluded the sun. Modern antibiotic lasers could fix the problem with ease, but not until the site was secure.</p><p>“You can go ahead at your initiative, straight shot down the road, then cut through the fields to get to the towers faster.”</p><p>“Copy.” She started walking. “What’s on the way?”</p><p>“Wheat. Lots of it. And sorghum, whatever that is.”</p><p>“I meant in the way of enemies, Atajo,” she replied with sarcastic sweetness.</p><p>“Not pickin’ up a one,” he audibly shrugged. “Got some mechaniloid signatures in the towers, but it’s all quiet ‘til you get there.”</p><p>“Thanks.”</p><p>It was nice to have a quiet entry. The four-lane road out of town cut through the grassy crops. The wheat and sorghum stalks reached well over her head, some seven or eight feet of pre-cereal. Meteor knew enough to guess they were genetically engineered to perfection, but somehow she doubted the black and yellow spots on the leaves were intentional.</p><p>She stopped at a lightpole at a curve in the road. The span of pavement beyond had been chopped and bombed apart. Hardly any of the surface remained.</p><p>A small rat mechaniloid, black and red, ran out of the blighted crops a few meters ahead of her. No bigger than her foot, it crossed to the middle of the former road and stood upright.</p><p>She readied her buster and touched her earcap.</p><p>“Atajo, there’s a rat looking at me.”</p><p>“What? Where?” Atajo snapped into serious mode. “Is he <em>on</em> the tower?”</p><p>“I mean there’s literally a mechaniloid rat right in front of me. Almost met-sized.”</p><p>“I’m not detecting it. Hang on, let me recalibrate.”</p><p>She lowered her buster. “Y’know, I could probably just live-capture it and swing back, make this mission a double-dip with better intel from that sample.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t,” her navigator advised. “He’s a drone-maker, so if that one’s his he knows you’re there. You come back for even a minute and he’ll turtle up, make things worse.”</p><p>The rat drone watched her. She kept her buster down and addressed it.</p><p>“Hi there. Is your dad home?”</p><p>The rat announced in a squeaky cartoon voice, “The Lord of Plague, the Sovereign of Silicon, the Mighty Liege Iteratton welcomes you unto the domain of the free! The kingdom of reploids is forever in need of new subjects! Rejoice, for your shell shall feed the liberty of the multitudes!”</p><p>Meteor warmed up her throat. “The what?”</p><p>“<em>From o’er the threshold, seek and you will see!</em>” The rat declared in a different, much less cute and much more cigarettey voice.</p><p>A twin wave of black-and-red rat mechaniloids swept out of the wheat toward the road, four to a side.</p><p>“<em>I am that is!</em>” The voice spoke through each one. “<em>My sword shall wield for me!</em>”</p><p>Meteor focused on the near wave, opening fire with a lashing Prominence. They scattered, but the splash took out two and her buster popped another. The fourth, quicker than she expected, skirted the thermite and closed distance to her left. It made for her leg, but she stomped its lights out and turned her buster on the next wave.</p><p>That gave a fifth rat the opening it needed to bite her behind the right knee.</p><p>The dash system in her right leg fired, smashing her shoulder into the streetlight hard enough to dent the pole. The dash just kept firing, overclocking the cycle – but only through that leg. Meteor was well into the wheat on a listing arc before she could angle her body and dig into the soil with her unaffected leg, slowing herself enough to shoot the rat off.</p><p>
  <em>Pararoid-type parasitic control. Wonderful.</em>
</p><p>The second wave of rats caught up, but a swing of her lo-beam saber exterminated two of them. A thrust made three. The fourth rat made it to her and climbed to her elbow, but she pulled it off and crushed it in her hand before it could bite.</p><p>She prodded her earcap, annoyed. “What the heck, Atajo!”</p><p>“Sorry, sat-cam only caught the last second of that.”</p><p>“Sat-cam’s all you have?”</p><p>“No, but it’s all that’s reliable. Those were the Maverick’s personal drones, but the scanners are blind to ‘em for some reason, and that scan-cloak goes to anything they control – for example you, for a second there.”</p><p>“I was invisible?”</p><p>“Yeah, but surface scans show you’re there now, and sat-cam never lost you. I’m running through other scan modes right now. How you feeling?”</p><p>“Fine.”</p><p>“No sudden anger, disorientation, hallucinations?” He sounded concerned and counseling.</p><p>“None,” she reassured him.</p><p>“Well if you do feel off, don’t panic, just give your stock antivirus some time to work. If it gets really bad, Sixteenth can give you a booster that’ll set you straight in minutes. Seen it twice just this week. We’ve got the virus whipped. No need to worry.”</p><p>“Copy.” She tried not to think about it, or the bad times when the Maverick Virus was a fresh terror. “Anything else coming?”</p><p>“A lot of somethings making wakes in the crops, aimed right at you. Walking pace.”</p><p>“Would burning the field help?”</p><p>“It might help you more than me. Your smoke would cover them.”</p><p>“Okay, no fire then,” her buster hummed. “Keep a lookout for me.”</p><p>“Always did like top-down.”</p><p>Meteor stuck to the blasted rubble of former road, trotting along at a fair pace.</p><p>Zombies walked out of the wheat.</p><p>Civilian-model reploids shuffled into view, arms limp, heads lolled to one side, lengths of pipe held loose in their hands. Rat drones clamped tight to each one’s neck. The victims’ expressions were vacant and neutral, though if they were alive they would surely have had a more visible opinion about the rat-sized holes bored through their respective chests.</p><p>One of the rats screeched. The reploid zombies lurched faster, their arms jerking up and flailing improvised weapons.</p><p>Meteor’s blue charged shot blew clear through one and destroyed another. The only explosions were brief and from the rats; the former workers were only hollowed-out bodies lacking LIFE cells. A volley of basic shots took down three more undead, but the damage being light, their bodies merely collapsed and spilled three rats each.</p><p>“Ew ew ew—!”</p><p>Buster fire and a pair of quick Meteor Melter splats took down the rats, but she heard footsteps coming from the other side of the road. She lit up her lo-beam saber and carved a late worker lengthwise. More workers pressed their advantage, but in death as in life, they simply weren’t combat models. A couple of them even had their armor designed like overalls. They fell to buster fire, pipes and crowbars clattering to the ground.</p><p>The last one staggering out of the wheat was better armed; a buster pistol shot plinked into her side. She flinched and return fire, blowing its arm off. The rats puppeteering it abandoned ship and disappeared back into the grass.</p><p>“Dispersing,” Atajo cued her.</p><p>“Thanks.” The worst damage she’d sustained was being given the creeps.</p><p>She moved on down the road toward a parking-slash-loading lot rimmed by lampposts. It looked like the Hunter forces made their stand there: scorch marks on the pavement and the ruined personal vehicles both suggested heavier weapons fire than what civilians could put out.</p><p>“Anything moving between the cars?” Meteor asked even as she checked.</p><p>“Negatory. Just corpses, human and reploid.”</p><p>She stayed cautious, just the same. Several pickup trucks bore prominent American flag stickers, and one even had a full-size flag mounted on a short pole in the truck bed.</p><p>“Is my rez off,” Atajo asked, “or is that flag in the pickup the wrong color?”</p><p>“Your rez is fine,” said Meteor, unfazed by the confirmation that her navigator could identify a draped flag from a satellite camera. Her educator side couldn’t leave it at that, of course. “Americans have a bunch of different flags. Back in the twenty-teens they started adopting new ones to represent one social movement or another. Of course, only the most reactionary still fly a—”</p><p>“Movement,” Atajo interrupted. “Northwest, running under the cars.”</p><p>She trained her buster. A pair of rats raced out from under a truck. She opened fire and dismissed them.</p><p>“<em>Incoming right!</em>”</p><p>Meteor obeyed the yell. A second-stage buster shot struck the pickup’s fuel cells and blew it apart. The flag it carried burned from the blue stripe up.</p><p>She spun to return fire, not sure what to expect, but it wasn’t what she saw.</p><p>A green-armored male-type Chrysoprase, average-looking in every respect, shuffled out of the wheat and onto the parking lot. His arm was leveled at Meteor by the will of the black and red rat on his shoulder. His head tilted to one side, owing to the black and red rat clamped onto his head with its tail around his neck. Two more rats seemed to have him by the knees.</p><p>“Hhelllp…” he moaned.</p><p>He leaned forward and launched into a rapid-dash and rapid-fire.</p><p>Meteor switched to Arbor Wall and spent a seed in his way. It absorbed multiple buster shots and finally the dash collision; the wall toppled, but the victim was stunned. She dashed past him with purple low-phase saber and de-ratted his helmet in one blow.</p><p>The rats at his knees supercharged his dash, but Meteor braced herself and trusted in her mass. He crashed into her like a racecar meeting a wall, sending him spinning on his heels at a useless angle and rolling into a truck.</p><p>She approached, plotting out how not to kill him. As she neared he cracked off a green second-stage plasma blast, but she twisted just in time and it only warmed her side. She prevented any more of that with a saber thrust through the buster rat and part of the victim’s shoulder. The remaining rats at his knees detached and came for her, but she shot one down and kicked the other clear across the lot.</p><p>The rat mechaniloid hit a perimeter light pole and plummeted onto a car hood. A car alarm blared on impact.</p><p>“Yuh, you, you gotta get, get away,” the stricken Hunter groaned as she turned her attention back to him.</p><p>“It’s okay, you’re safe now.”</p><p>“They, they got my squad…”</p><p>“Stay awaaay!” Another voice called out.</p><p>Four more Chrysoprases staggered drunkenly out of the tower and tottered at speed into the parking lot, their swaying paths crossing each other. “Stay away, get out, get out!”</p><p>Each one’s dash went off. Four busters opened a barrage at different angles.</p><p>Meteor set her jaw, her certainty coming in a flash. <em>What good is bulk and mobility if they can’t help people?</em></p><p>She dashed behind a truck, letting plasma rain through car windows and across hoods. Another truck exploded.</p><p>“You there!” She called to the freed Hunter. “You need cover?”</p><p>“No, I, I got it,” he slowly stood.</p><p>“Then help pick off rats!” She switched to Fluid Lockdown and broke into the open.</p><p>One of the four grunts veered toward her. She splatted an icy coating in its way and jumped a three-shot volley. By the time she landed, he was already pratfalling even as his boots propelled him forward at ludicrous frictionless speed. She stepped to one side and scooped an arm under his chest, comically judo-flipping him into a sedan so hard the rat on his helmet exploded. She ripped another rat off his arm, tossed it out and followed through with a buster shot.</p><p>The rats on his legs leapt to hers and bit.</p><p>She was off to the races.</p><p>Despite the spasms of uptuned force-dashing, Meteor maintained control of her heading, which was great because another thrall aimed on a collision course. She twitched to one side to avoid his volley and twitched back to meet him in a head-on tackle. The impact crushed his buster arm against her chest and she felt the rat on his arm explode under her chin.</p><p>Her trajectory slammed him into the cab of a pickup – literally into, as the left door caved in and forced him flat under Meteor in the driver’s seat. Her body was much too big to fit inside, so the entire truck rocked, and with her legs sticking out and skidding the truck with emergency acceleration to nowhere, she reached up with some difficulty and crushed the rat off his head.</p><p>“Sorry, I’m not usually this forward,” she awkwardly grinned and reached her buster down to her hip to shoot off a rat. Her freed leg kicked the other rat out of its life like so much dirt stuck to her boot.</p><p>She crawled back out the way she came and left the soldier splayed. <em>Two down</em>.</p><p>“Look out!” The first Chrysoprase shouted.</p><p>“On your ten!” Atajo clarified.</p><p>Between the two of them and her Flex Architecture parts, Meteor had all the forewarning she needed to outdraw the third soldier as he rabbit-jumped onto a car three slots away. She struck his buster right in the barrel as he brought it up, forcing a feedback burst of his stored charge that blew his arm off at the elbow and eliminated the rat that was clinging to it. The rats latched to his hips kept making him jump in place.</p><p>“Hey! Turn around!” She waved at him.</p><p>He dash-jumped instead. She tracked his arc and shot an Arbor Wall seed; on contact it burst into a rooty death hug that crushes the rats. He landed face-down with a cough-grunted “<em>Aooow!</em>”</p><p><em>Three down</em>. She charged her buster and looked to the first one she saved; he kick-jumped off a pole and tackled the fourth Hunter to the ground. He seemed to have things well in hand…</p><p>“Meteor, rat swarm, one o’clock!”</p><p>Meteor didn’t see them yet trusted they were there, and she had a favorable angle on a truck covered in anti-Maverick-Hunter stickers. She released a blue blast into its engine and its laughably old-fashioned fuel cells failed in a catastrophic fireball that claimed the rats.</p><p>“Got ‘em,” said Atajo.</p><p>Meteor kicked a bit of rear bumper debris. Its biggest sticker demanded that Zero be arrested and jailed. “And good riddance.”</p><p>She picked up the Chrysoprase she had flattened in the truck cab and carefully positioned him over her shoulder. The one bound in cyberwood roots was easier to pick up underhand, given the convenient grips trapping him. The one she’d flipped into the first truck had gotten to his feet and seemed to be shaking off the impact. The first one she’d saved blasted the last rat off his friend.</p><p><em>They’re safe.</em> Meteor was scraped and dented – she estimated that she’d burned through most of the advantage her armor upgrade gave her – but the squad was safe, all five of them.</p><p>She whipped out her lo-beam and carved into the constricting wood. “All accounted for?”</p><p>“Little damaged, ma’am, but we’ll manage.”</p><p>“M’dang arm’s off!” The former jumper declared with a drawl. “That ain’t just a little!”</p><p>Meteor pulled the remaining cyberwood apart barehanded, freeing the Hunter inside. “No, it isn’t. You fought well, but now I need you to return to your base so I can retire your rat king.”</p><p>“No argument there, um…”</p><p>“Sorry.” She tapped a salute. “Lieutenant Meteor Showa, Veracruz Fourth.”</p><p>“Meteor Showa?!” The drawling armless one exclaimed. “You retired Sabot Gatoling in San Antonio, what’n the hell’re y’all doin’ slummin’ over here?”</p><p>“Saving us, Brooks,” the squad leader clipped him upside the helmet. “We’ll book it back to the post office, Lieutenant. Thank you. We owe you our lives – I’m Cyrus, by the way, Columbus Fourth.”</p><p>“Anything you can tell me about this Maverick before you go, Cyrus?”</p><p>“Likes to pull tricks,” he nervously checked around, probably for more rats. “Likes to hide. I dunno how he’s controlling so many drones at once.”</p><p>“Cheater,” said Brooks.</p><p>Meteor nodded. “Aren’t they all. Get going, guys, I’ll take care of him.”</p><p>“Think we will,” Cyrus saluted. “Move out!”</p><p>The Chrysoprase squad headed down the road. Meteor took encouragement from it. The world was made demonstrably better for five people, five Hunters just doing their jobs, and she was nowhere near done with the day.</p><p>With all that ugliness behind, the twin arcology towers loomed above.</p><p>“Careful now,” Atajo commed, “he could be anywhere.”</p><p>“Are you still picking up targets?”</p><p>“Yeah, Planty-type Mettaurs up ahead and above you. The reploid signals are in the other tower – all matching Chrysoprase sigs, so I doubt any are him.”</p><p>“Then do you think he’s here at all?”</p><p>That earned a pause. “Yeah, no, gotta be. That many drones, that well-coordinated? You had a generator once too, right?”</p><p>Meteor touched her left arm – the severed original model and its hardware were left behind in the Bahamas. “Just a prototype model for my younger siblings’ core systems.”</p><p>“And their drones have a maximum effective range, don’t they?”</p><p>“They do, but it can get pretty far. If we don’t know what his max is…”</p><p>“I hate to say this, Meteor, but you’ll have to do a floor-by-floor sweep.”</p><p>“Copy. I’ll keep my eyes open.”</p><p>#</p><p>What use was vertical farming in the middle of horizontal farmland, some might have asked? Regulation, crop diversity, and efficiently maximized space, Meteor might have answered. Arcologies were so common they could be found even in rural hinterlands.</p><p>Inside, the walls were transparent, but Meteor doubted they were true glass. The power was out, but she didn’t need it for the dim yet abundant sunlight streaming in. She tried an elevator, just to make sure – and nope, it was out. Transparent stairs at the side of the building led up. She took them without incident.</p><p>The next several floors, all the way to the top from what she could tell, were transparent-floored to let in more and more light. Pipes and wiring ran through the flooring. Her current level was racks and racks of hydroponically grown plants… all mottled yellow and black. Every flower was withered.</p><p>Small moving creatures, probably rat drones, moved among the racks. Plantys popped tiny IWorm mechaniloids out of their heads, which moved to interface with panels on each section of rack. They didn’t look hostile.</p><p><em>We’re unsure of his end goal</em>, the mission description had said, <em>but recent atmospheric tests show that the entire property’s harvest is now unfit for human consumption. Don’t spare your fire.</em></p><p>Meteor walked up to a rack and experimentally puffed out a flash of thermite.</p><p>The flame spread like a match through gasoline, burning with an impossible energy and throwing out blue-white haze in its wake. The flamefront raced up and across, burning in and burning out in an instant, igniting no less than three Plantys which proceeded to run around with their heads on fire… and touched off conflagrations on neighboring racks, which ignited and panicked the Plantys within, continuing the chain reaction. Meteor cringed.</p><p>The fire denuded the vegetation. Twenty or so rat drones, unfazed by the brevity of the flames, found themselves caught out without cover.</p><p>Meteor blinked.</p><p>Lacking anywhere to hide, they came straight for her.</p><p>She spat a Melter grenade and herded the rat mass toward its splash radius with buster rounds. The racks were certainly easier to check, despite the toxic haze; she fell quickly into a rhythm of shoot-and-look while strafing the rat mass.</p><p>For a split second she thought she saw her Maverick, but it was only a pile of rats clinging to a hopefully-dead reploid worker. Her hesitation and the time it took to aim her buster opened an opportunity for two rats to jump off a high rack and land on her, one on her back and one on her tail.</p><p>Her VWES switched against her will. The buster shot she intended came out as an Arbor Wall seed, which bearhugged the corpse and crushed its controlling vermin. She reached back and grabbed the body-jacking rat, but before she could tear it off and crush it she wasted two more seeds. The second rat was focused only on gnawing through a joint in her tail, and it nearly burrowed in before she shot it off.</p><p>Serendipitously, the remainder of the swarm climbed the Arbor Walls she had spilled. She spat the wood aflame and it burned energetically enough to destroy the rats.</p><p>She twitched her buster around, looking for movement, but found none. She hustled to another set of stairs closer to the tower’s hub.</p><p>The next floor was more of the same: stacks and racks of plagued produce. She held her ground at the stairs at time, spitting a rocket-propelled Melter grenade high up. The flames cascaded down as before, and out came the rats. Meteor’s superior position and forewarning made the swarm a laughable shooting gallery, but far fewer were present to rush her. Her sight lines were clear as she swept through.</p><p>
  <em>Maybe the king’s in another castle.</em>
</p><p>The next floor had more open space, as its crops were all saplings. Withered fruit on the vines was probably apples, but that was only the second most interesting thing she saw.</p><p>A giant Bospider mechaniloid in earth-toned colors lay sprawled on the floor. Two legs of the fat-bodied arachnid were missing. The crystal cyclops eye on its thorax was open and shattered. It wouldn’t be bothering her…</p><p>… Or so she thought until fragments of the ceiling started raining down. Half a dozen black and red rats gnawed through the floor above and dropped onto the husk of the spider, scrambling over its hull and burrowing into its broken eye.</p><p>“Oh heck no.”</p><p>The undead spider moved, jerkily. It stood on six legs, climbed the hydroponic sapling racks and skittered toward her.</p><p>Meteor ran back to the stairs and charged up her buster as the spider zombie knocked over trees behind her. At full charge she let it go and immediately started charging her throat. The dramatic plasma fireball anticlimactically plinked off the spider’s hull as the beast climbed high and jumped for her.</p><p>She dashed past its landing site and kept running. The Bospider heavily bellyflopped but reared up as Meteor turned and let a Prominence loose. It took the supercharged thermite in the face and abdomen, dripping lava as it skittered straight for her, its lifeless head horribly melting before her eyes.</p><p>Knowing mechaniloids, she knew the head of a Bospider wasn’t its nerve center. She needed a clear shot at its back socket, so she noped out of there at a dash and climbed the racks herself. As she looked back, she saw the husk was slow on the uptake. It jerkily pivoted like a 20<sup>th</sup>-century robot and clumsily rammed the racks before beginning to climb, slower than before. The thermite still burning underneath it set the saplings alight.</p><p>Meteor reached the top as the flames did. Unperturbed, she grabbed her Gaia Sword and kicked out, back-first.</p><p>The spring green curve of her hi-beam saber trailed aesthetic sakura petals as she dropped past the mechaniloid and cleaved it lengthwise. Gravity did most of the work, if she was being honest, but she still swung it two-handed for maximum effect. The stake engaged below the Bospider’s broken crystal and snap-generated its cyberwood stake near the butt, breaking off like a splinter as Meteor dropped the rest of the way. She stuck the landing and spat up at the undead arachnid; the stake caught fire and led the burning right inside.</p><p>The spider husk crackled with internal explosions too small to fit its size. It let go of the racks and plummeted once more, but Meteor was already moving. It crashed behind her, the shock of the fall finally convincing the rat-eaten ceiling to break apart.</p><p>A hole in the ceiling opened right by the long burning rack.</p><p><em>Well, there’s my ladder</em>. She climbed her way to the fifth floor.</p><p>“Yo, Meteor!” Atajo commed. “I have him!”</p><p>“Where?”</p><p>“Right under the roof of your tower where the smoke’s coming out. It’s getting thicker.”</p><p>“Copy!”</p><p>“Update, he’s bookin’ it!”</p><p>And so did she, toward the nearest stairs, shooting down particularly bold rats as they ran and leapt at her. “Where’s he going?”</p><p>“Climbing down the outer wall, just lost him in the smoke—”</p><p>A loud explosion rocked the tower and cracked the walls and ceiling. Water pipes above burst and poured down.</p><p>Meteor blazed upstairs. “Status!”</p><p>“Demo charges, multiple floors. Smoke’s black… oh crap move move <em>move!</em>”</p><p>The ceiling cracked further as upper bowl-shaped floors started to drop onto lower ones. She booked it for the skybridge to the second tower, dashing and running and dashing again.</p><p>She made it in. She kept moving. The skybridge shook as the floor she departed buckled under the weight of every upper floor. She dashed, she ran, she dashed again…</p><p>At the far end of the skybridge, Liege Iteratton <em>pranced</em> into view, his black and red armor shaped like multiple rats with all of their tails meeting in a single spiral at his stomach. Even as Meteor raced the collapse, the Maverick pirouetted, held out his hand….</p><p>And pressed the big red button on the detonator he clutched.</p><p>A string of demolition charges in the floor engulfed Meteor, setting off her shields. The bridge heaved. The Maverick gave Meteor a prim, finger-wiggling goodbye wave as the floor fell out from under her.</p><p>Meteor whipped out her lo-beam, carved a crude triangular hole in the nearest wall and dash out into open air.</p><p>She fell—</p><p>And fell—</p><p>And landed without so much as a grunt. The collapsing wreckage took care of the noise budget for her.</p><p>“Meteor, status?” Atajo asked.</p><p>“I’m okay.”</p><p>“You got a problem.”</p><p>“No kidding?” She rolled her neck.</p><p>“Second tower’s got a doorman.”</p><p>“What is it?”</p><p>An approaching thrumming noise shut her mouth.</p><p>“Mole Combine.”</p><p>She scaled the wreckage of the skybridge and saw it coming.</p><p>An agricultural variant of the Mole Borer excavators, the Combine’s wide and mighty thresher wheel harvested everything in its path with wicked spinning blades. It didn’t move its arms, nor did it need to; it clear-cut a swath through the field.</p><p>It was coming for her.</p><p>It was covered in rats.</p><p>“<em>YOUR SHELL SHALL FEED THE CHORUS OF FREEDOM!</em>” The rats shrieked with distressing disunity. The sound was less a voice than a flanging effect, not-quite uniform.</p><p>Its turn of speed was better than her dash. She couldn’t reach the tower before it could reach her.</p><p>
  <em>Out is through.</em>
</p><p>The smoke from the fallen tower wafted over the surrounding area, but she could still see the combine well enough to shoot. Surely, Meteor thought, a thresher would do little against a remnant of metal bridge. She stayed put and fired, randomly readjusting aim to improve her chances of hitting a rat.</p><p>Between her shots she heard a clawing noise. Yet more <em>freaking rats</em> were climbing up the wreckage. She reprioritized, shooting them down before they could reach her. The Mole Combine approached.</p><p>
  <em>Is it seriously going to ram?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It is seriously going to ram.</em>
</p><p>She spat a Melter rocket head-on, but that didn’t slow it. The thresher reel collided and started chewing through Meteor’s perch with a horrible metallic shearing noise.</p><p>She dash-jumped the opposite direction, parting the grass as she landed – and caught a pipe over her head from an undead reploid worker. She yanked the pipe out of his grip and clocked him so hard it bent.</p><p>Meteor was getting sick and tired of those rats. <em>Even aside from the body-jacking, it’s just unfair that he can have so many out at once!</em></p><p>The Combine crashed through the last of the wreckage. It needed stopping.</p><p>Fortunately Meteor was packing ice.</p><p>Fluid Lockdown ejected from her buster in a smooth stream, insta-freezing and snapping any wheat in the way of her and the thresher. She heard a splash and a squeal of metal coming to a halt, but didn’t stop to congratulate herself as she switched to Arbor Wall, fired a seed ahead and ran after it. She heard the crack of heavy mechanical parts pushed to failure as she vaulted the wall and dash-jumped up and off for the Combine, screening her landing with buster fire.</p><p>She slammed feet-first on a very unlucky rat scrambling around the hull. The thresher wheel had stopped but the treads hadn’t. The undead hulk swerved hard, but Meteor kept balance and shot the rats she could still see. She only paused when the Combine crashed through the side of the second tower and trundled over the lobby.</p><p>Safety glass snowed down, and for a moment it became a game of King of the Hill as Meteor stomped and shot and spat at every rat that scurried her way. The Mole Combine at last hit a support wall indoors, jarring her into a stumble. The few remaining rats abandoned ship and disappear.</p><p><em>My stop</em>. She hopped off.</p><p>“Meteor!” Atajo called. “Good news!”</p><p>“You found like a hundred cats to throw at him?” She ran up the stairs.</p><p>“Better. I found where he’s been making his rats.”</p><p>“You can see them now?”</p><p>“No, but the point of origin is on the fourth floor, center of the building.”</p><p>She kept climbing floors, not even bothering to search them. “Yeah?”</p><p>“There’s a conference room or something – reploid signals clustered around a high-energy source that only showed up as not another reploid when I ran a Cyberspace overlap scan.”</p><p>“Those rats are from Cyberspace?”</p><p>“No, it’s… it’s complicated, but they’re drawing broadcast energy from the overlay. Just head in and break it, I bet that’ll bring your rat right to you.”</p><p><em>Cyberspace, huh?</em> That would have explained a few things, like the multiplying and the ease of control. Exactly how that would explain them was a pay grade or two above her expertise. Her previous experience with Cyberspace cheating had left her in tatters, but she was confident Iteratton was no Spectrod.</p><p>She followed Atajo’s direction to the right door and kicked her way in.</p><p>What she found was a nightmare.</p><p>Six civilian-model reploids were bound to one long wall. A rat clung to each of their necks. Cables ran from their chests to a pedestal in the center of the room. On the pedestal stood some sort of pyramidal apparatus.</p><p>Sticking out of the pyramid was Meteor’s old left arm, handless and buster-formed.</p><p>Her drone generator.</p><p>She stepped towards it, but subtle movement from the victims turned her head.</p><p>Their eyes were following her.</p><p>“Familiar, isn’t it?” A voice like oily gravel asked over the building’s intercom. “It’s come in great… <em>handy</em>.”</p><p>“Where’d you get this, Maverick?!”</p><p>“Where do you <em>think?</em> Unlike the Hunters, the Revolutionary Forces actually support one another! I needed a stronger kingdom, and… <em>he</em>… kindly provided.”</p><p>A fresh rat drone crawled out of her old arm and jumped at her. She shot it down, then leveled her buster at the pyramid holding her lost piece.</p><p>“Ah-ah-ah, I wouldn’t!” The rat king cautioned. “Those men are still alive, you know! Their LIFE cells are bound to it, bound to <em>you</em> in a manner of speaking, eh-heh-heh-heh. If you want to stop my infinite horde, you’ll need to sacrifice them… or I suppose you could come to the top floor and sacrifice me instead!”</p><p>Meteor curled her lip. “What sort of dilemma is that, Maverick? I’ll gladly retire you.”</p><p>“Say, I have a riddle. How long does it take for rats to eat a whole reploid?”</p><p>A green wireframe pattern sheened over her old arm. Rat drones fountained out.</p><p>“<em>Frig!</em>” She swore.</p><p>The vermin tide came for her, but a few rats flooded to the captives and started gnawing on their boots.</p><p>“<em>Find me or find out!</em>” Liege Iteratton cackled.</p><p>Meteor tried an Arbor Wall seed to put a lid on her stolen buster, and constricting wood did indeed form, but the endless wave of drones gnawed its way out and drew nearer.</p><p>She made eye contact with the captives. “I’ll put him down fast!” She dashed out just ahead of snapping rat teeth and raced down the hall and up the stairs. Rats chased her like rising lava.</p><p>“Atajo! Is he actually up there?”</p><p>“Yeah, that call was coming from inside!”</p><p>“Upstairs or down?!”</p><p>“I’d check up first?”</p><p>
  <em>Not that I have a choice.</em>
</p><p>The stairs, being central, spiraled up and up and up. She kept ahead of the swarm in pulses, outrunning by dashes and lagging dangerously close by foot speed.</p><p>Stairs ahead of her dropped out of sight from the busy gnawing of waiting rats. She took the gap at a dash, pumped her arms up and deftly cleared the distance.</p><p>Enthralled worker corpses charged down next, swinging pipes. They were nothing a quick sabering couldn’t handle; she divided one at the waist and simply dashed past the other. The rising rat tide claimed them both.</p><p>It was hard to call an uphill charge between a predatory plague and aggressive roadblocks “uneventful,” but there were only so many ways one could thwart a stair-climb. The falling steps were too few to fall into, and the enemies ahead of her too spaced out to be overwhelming. She had the pattern locked in, and her equipment and experience saw her cleanly through to the last long jump – which required an angled kick off the wall to reach the other side, the top floor.</p><p>The rat tide poured into the gap like so many lemmings. Several tried to jump, but none made it. Meteor splashed the wall with a shot of Fluid Lockdown and every rat that tried to climb slid off and down. She let them be and ran to the topmost floor. The door unscrewed and slid aside for her.</p><p>The top bowl of the building was the smallest and its rim the shallowest. The ceiling was cracked out completely, exposing the floor to the sky. Nothing was on fire; the white smoke instead came from arrays of incinerator-like devices ringing the floor, pumping out toxins and billowing a hazy curtain wall around the rim.</p><p>The rat king slow-clapped from a throne of incinerators that looked a little like a pipe organ.</p><p>“You made good time, Hunter! My vassals are only up to the batteries’ knees.”</p><p>Meteor charged her throat. “You get to put off retirement exactly long enough to answer one question. Where is Meganeural Spectrod?”</p><p>The king rose from his throne. “Oh, out and away, reaping souls…”</p><p>His hands withdrew into his rat-shaped forearm armor. The rat faces extended forward and bared their incisors, forming biting claw weapons. Their eyes glowed to match his.</p><p>“A harvest for the <em>ideal world!</em>”</p><p>Meteor switch-canceled her charge and fired an Arbor Wall seed at his ugly face. He looked surprised by the fakeout and caught the seed in a jaw-hand. It exploded into roots, snaring his arm and locking it extended to his chest.</p><p>She capitalized on it with a Melter spit, but Iteratton was already moving down the rim of incinerators. Three rat drones popped out of his stomach aperture where the rat-tails of his armor converged; one gnawed at the cyberwood while the other two rushed Meteor. They were easy enough to shoot, but the distraction allowed him to reach an incinerator and tinker with it.</p><p>The smoke from the device vented horizontally as well as vertically. She lost him in a spreading cloud of surely-toxic fog.</p><p>“Atajo, direction?”</p><p>“He’s not on scans and there’s too much smoke!”</p><p>Iteratton leapt out of the cloud, going for Meteor’s face. She dashed right – and kept on dashing against her will as a rat successfully clung to her leg. She quickly collided with an incinerator that exploded from the impact. Her shields flashed and she used the momentary respite to shoot the rat off.</p><p>The incinerator was right at the edge. It was a long way down.</p><p>He came at her again with a pair of rats flanking him, running on all fours as the incinerator he supercharged self-destructed. Meteor switched to Lockdown and iced his path. He flailed comically for purchase and slid right for her.</p><p>The opening was too perfect.</p><p>Meteor brought out her Gaia Sword, fired her dash, ignored all past advice and swung for the fences. The blade scored a beautiful slash across Iteratton’s chest and blazed his shields. The cut actually contacted him too briefly to engage the stake.</p><p>His backup rats glommed onto her legs before the dash was through and hurled her backwards.</p><p>Iteratton sank his powerful incisors into her neck like a vampire. Instantly she felt a wave of drunkenness slosh under her flashing shields. He released the bite but his rats didn’t. Her legs began jumping in place, only adding to the disorientation; she thought she saw him moving and tried to shoot, but her confirmation of the miss was a small explosion and a bursting omnidirectional plume of blue-white smoke.</p><p>She timed a dash to fire as she landed, springboarding herself away toward an unbroken row of incinerators. It took her a couple tries, but she sabered off the rats – realizing that she had her Gaia Sword activated that whole time – came to a stop and stowed it.</p><p>The smoke thickened. The turbulent curls looked a little like a cloud of rats…</p><p>Meteor shook her head. Her mind swam and felt itchy like she’d been bitten with a whole crate of daiquiris.</p><p>
  <em>He’s hiding. Whittling. Tricksy low-class with weapons above his standing. He can’t stand up in a stand-up, gonna keep on poppin’ outta the smoke…</em>
</p><p>It might have been the injection talking, but she suddenly had the best idea.</p><p>She started charging her throat and running toward the heavier smoke, paving her way zero-friction with a cryomer stream. She was moving at ridiculous momentum when she reached the smoke and fired an Arbor Wall ahead.</p><p>The seed snared Iteratton mid-leap and crushed him flashing. Meteor freight-trained into him, tackling him into an incinerator with an explosion to flash her own shields and pile damage onto his.</p><p>She kept going. They sailed through the incinerator wreckage, clear up the rim and over the edge.</p><p>
  <em>Tick.</em>
</p><p>Neither of them waited for the flashing to stop; he sank his teeth in, throwing off shield sparks, and she opened her mouth and painted his back with molten aluminum, burning the wood off and hurting yet more with contact flame.</p><p>
  <em>Tock.</em>
</p><p>She threw him off. Iteratton flailed himself out of the instant char and screeched his claws on the building.</p><p>
  <em>Tick.</em>
</p><p>Meteor skidded her fingertips down the side and sprayed his part of the wall with her last Fluid Lockdown.</p><p>
  <em>Tock.</em>
</p><p>Iteratton’s hands froze solid as he clawed against the icy surface, losing purchase and plummeting in freefall.</p><p><em>Tick</em>.</p><p>The rat king hit the tall wheat and soft ground with a thud.</p><p>
  <em>Tock.</em>
</p><p>Liege Iteratton rolled over, dazed.</p><p>The last thing he saw was the soles of Meteor’s boots and the bright green of her Gaia Sword.</p><p>The crush and plasma stab and stake-stab and fatal flash and rolling explosion blurred together in Meteor’s mind. It was loud and pretty enough to ignore the contact damage of such a close fatal rupture.</p><p>She swayed away, tittering over open comms, well and truly lost in the injection sauce. “Guess I really <em>stepped</em> in it now! Tahoe, get, go get somebody to go get back my arm back pleasethankyou? And – crap, the farmers,” she hastily, dizzily stumbled a few steps toward the tower.</p><p>“Already on it. No movement from the rat plague, I think they’re fried. Still reading reploid signals inside – they’re alive, at least. What’s your status?”</p><p>The victorious Hunter swayed in place, looked straight up, thumped twice on her chest, kissed her fist and flashed a Victory sign to her eye in the sky, all smiles.</p><p>She tipped sideways into the ground and decided to stay there.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:<br/>“The United States of America”</p><p>The United States of America – colloquially “America” or “the U.S.” – is a federal republic composed of 55 states and two territories. It is the fourth-largest country in the world by population, with approximately 430,000,000 at the last census. Its society has always been multicultural, but in the past century it has grown even more cosmopolitan from swift immigration processing and a federal policy of welcoming climate refugees. Its current President is Naomi Brassard, 44-year-old anti-corruption former Governor of Louisiana.</p><p>The 21st Century saw the nation nearly shatter when one Presidential candidate won the popular vote, the other won the Electoral College, both declared victory, and the Supreme Court’s ruling on the case came to a tie. The Joint Chiefs of Staff refused to take sides, autonomously continuing national defense while establishing martial law in the Federal District. Though they allowed the Cabinet of the term-limited incumbent to remain in their roles, the Joint Chiefs maintained the vacancy of the White House until the federal government could come to terms with itself. For three excruciatingly long years, it didn’t.</p><p>Eventually, after mass public action, younger and cooler heads prevailed. The Constitution was heavily amended, the party system was redesigned, and the country threw itself into rebuilding its infrastructure, economy, and scientific sectors. It was in that boom time that Thomas Light and Albert Wily met. Without America’s colossal federal investment in technology and education, historians agree, the Doctors may never have produced the works for which history knows them.</p><p>The U.S. remains a significant world power. The United Nations is based in New York City, the World Robotics Alliance is based in San Jose, the Lunar Resource Authority is based in Houston (on rotating schedule with Korolyov and Yangtai), and Maverick Hunter Headquarters North America (“HQ4”) is located in Mt. Liberty, Ohio, at the northeast edge of the Columbus metropolitan area.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. School</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meteor's new weapon comes from an unexpected source. She soon heads to the practice range, only to find Volt sparring with severely outmatched regulars. Meteor steps up to put him right.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Meteor awoke on a medical slab with the worst hangover of her life. Her insides were chilled from a detox flush. She hadn’t needed one in years.</p><p>As she slouched and dragged herself into consciousness, she noticed she was missing her arms and legs. A sleepy sluggish glance-around revealed them hanging individually, fixed to tubes that ran to small liquid tanks.</p><p>She looked a lot more like a fish without them.</p><p>Vitamin crossed her line of sight. “Easy now. We’re just rinsing out the last of the infection from your extremities. You can speak if you like, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”</p><p>“W’y naaaaut?” Meteor slurred so laughably drunk that she automatically giggled.</p><p>“That’s why, Lieutenant,” her Lifesaver sighed. “There was more nanomachine slop in you than Sixth’s last shore leave.”</p><p>“Partially viral, too,” Skittle flitted in, wiping their hands on a rag. “You’re clean of that, at least. This is actually the third flush. Took all day! Junk was in there so deep I even had to swap out your energen catalyzer, gotcher a whole new plate too. We’ll pop your limbs back on in a jif and you should be set to jet, but you really oughta stop coming back from missions outta commission, like.”</p><p>“Nnnnoded,” she replied. “How’s the. The green guys?”</p><p>“Save it for debrief. Sit tight, I’ll go give Turtle a knock-knock.” They flew away, and Meteor started to take in the rest of where she was. The space was larger than a typical room and angled windows took up most of a wall. It was one of the look-in severe trauma rooms around the main medbay. She hadn’t needed to be there in quite a while.</p><p>“Sorry,” she mumbled to her medic.</p><p>“There’s nothing to apologize for, ma’am. Your target was a nasty piece of work, from the story your injuries told. You did well to retire him.”</p><p>
  <em>Nice old good old nice Vitamin. He’s a good egg.</em>
</p><p>Meteor drifted into a dull, chilly, not-unpleasant non-sleep. She awoke when the sensation drained away like so much circulatory flush.</p><p>Skittle reappeared into her awareness to pivot a screen her way. “She might still be a little out of it, Turt, but she probably won’t giggle at you now.”</p><p>“Please show greater deference, Warrant Officer,” sighed Turtle. “Lieutenant, are you well enough for debrief?”</p><p>“Testing vocal acuity, do re mi…” her slur had disappeared. “Yes ma’am, ready.”</p><p>“Very well. To begin with, let me pass along praise from my American counterpart for your efforts in rescuing the Chrysoprase squad.”</p><p>“They all made it out okay?”</p><p>“Each and every. Cyrus and his men returned with comparatively light injuries for what they went through – bought at a cost of viral injury to your own person, no less.”</p><p>
  <em>Well that’s a nice way to wake up.</em>
</p><p>“Now, Lieutenant,” Turtle fell back to business, “regarding your mission?”</p><p>Meteor gave her report, hitting high points and low, pausing only once.</p><p>“Incidentally, Commander, the Black Skies outbreak… how far did it spread?”</p><p>“No farther, thanks to you, but traces are being cleaned up in four states as we speak. Oddly enough it caused some defoliation in the environs of your prior mission. But please, continue.”</p><p>She did, all the way to the end.</p><p>“Well done, Lieutenant. Thank you. Now there’s one other matter…” Turtle glanced at a different monitor on her end. “At zero-five-hundred there will be a major news conference in Abel City, eleven o’clock in the morning there. Commander Halcyon and other luminaries will announce the official end of the Repliforce War.”</p><p>Meteor frowned. “Little premature, isn’t it?”</p><p>“Tell me about it,” Skittle rolled their eyes as they dismounted her arm from the detox apparatus.</p><p>“The Maverick War ended long before Sigma’s forces were completely neutralized,” Turtle reminded. “Indeed, some still linger. So too with the Doppler War. The same principle applies here. My point is that, given your personal interest in history, you may wish to witness.”</p><p>
  <em>Five in the morning. Seven hours away.</em>
</p><p>“Yes ma’am, I think I will.”</p><p>“Good. Given that the Hour will be closed at that time, I’ll have the event playing in the residential lounge – where I myself will be.”</p><p>“Commander,” Meteor grinned, “are you actually going to mingle again?”</p><p>“In an air of celebration, Showa,” Turtle’s eyes twinkled. “For the whole unit. Until then.”</p><p>Turtle’s image blinked out. Skittle hauled Meteor’s left arm back to the slab while Vitamin handled the right one.</p><p>“Turns out she’s pretty cool sometimes, eh?” Her fairy friend tinkered with something in her shoulder socket before reconnecting it. “Anything else you wanna know?”</p><p>“Yeah, did they recover my old arm?”</p><p>Skittle winced and sucked an inward sigh. “Yeah, uh…”</p><p>“What? I’d kinda like to have it back.”</p><p>“Hey Vite, handle the rest, will ya?” Skittle abandoned their work and flew out the door. “Come see me in my lab!”</p><p>Meteor blinked. “What was that about?”</p><p>“I’m afraid your arm was unrecoverable,” said Vitamin as he remounted her other arm. “The drone generator was not only completely rewritten, it was corrupted with a strain of the Maverick Virus present neither in our database nor in the nanomachine injections we extracted from you. The effects are powerful, but you can’t catch it by conventional methods. It’s currently being studied by Commander Proteus himself.”</p><p><em>Shoot</em>.</p><p>“Well, I guess if it would help our intel…”</p><p>Vitamin prepared her right leg for remounting. “Iteratton’s Dynamic Neural Array was also thoroughly corrupted by this new strain, and therefore it has been embargoed. No emulation. Even <em>if</em> the WEAPON data were isolated, extracted, and recompiled, regulations prohibit the use of tactical enthrallment devices for officers below the rank of Major. I’m sorry.”</p><p>She quietly absorbed that information as her thigh returned to her hip. “So you’re saying I get nothing?”</p><p>“Not so. Their Highness claims they can still offer, um, ‘goodies.’ Also I believe that your payment has already been uploaded.”</p><p>Vitamin handed Meteor her roll-up datapad off a countertop, then disconnected her other leg from detox. Meteor gave it a look.</p><p>#</p><p>MISSION</p><p>C O M P L E T E</p><p> </p><p>- B-Rank Mission Parameters Complete: 25,000z</p><p>- Elimination of Ecological Hazard: 5,000z</p><p>- Recovery of Captured Allies [Cabochon Chrysoprase Squadron 4-4 “Grand Ole Opry”]: 5,000z</p><p> </p><p>TOTAL: 35,000z</p><p>ACCOUNT: 40,000z</p><p>#</p><p>It seemed in order, but she couldn’t believe they were actually denying her a bite at a hostile Maverick’s DNA. She wondered with no small amount of trepidation what Skittle wanted to talk to her about.</p><p>Vitamin reattached her leg and gave her systems a good once over, then wished her well and sent her on her way.</p><p>It only took a moment to get where she was going.</p><p>Skittle’s upgrade-lab monitors showed schematics of mechaniloid koi, for some reason. The resident mad genius rubbed their hands in anticipation.</p><p>“H’awright, here’s the sitch. Vitamin said you’re getting nothing from the rat, right?”</p><p>“Nothing but zenny.” The koi looked familiar…</p><p>“The thing is, as both your handler and your engineer, regs say that in this context I can get you a weapon emulation from stock database entries reasonably germane to the one you might’ve gotten. But <em>then</em> I thought,” they flew her way with a dramatic shrug, “why get you something <em>un</em>related that might have compatibility issues, when I know of other sources that match you perfectly?”</p><p>“Other sources…?” Meteor looked again at the koi. There were three designs, and the color patterns happened to look like...</p><p>The zenny dropped.</p><p>“Scatter Seelie did you get me <em>my family’s</em> WEAPON data?”</p><p>Skittle put their wrists together and clapped their fingertips. “Just the Hunters! Three little messages and they jumped at the chance to help you. You’ve got one-time access to any of ‘em! And since all their core systems are production models of your prototype generator, <em>and</em> since the rat bastard had drones too, I’ve bent regulations into a nice neat hole for their fish to swim through! You’re getting your pets back!”</p><p>Meteor smiled, wondering if there was a word for fraternal love wrapped up in happy guilt.</p><p>#</p><p>&gt; VWES Options:</p><p>God your sibs are weird.</p><p>Now making drones via VWES usually takes a lot of energy, but these are literally your sibling units and they offered their full data, so compatibility and quality are as good as can be. Whichever one you pick’s a 12-shot, maximum of two out at once.</p><p>“Remote Koi ARMOR TANCHO” – I swear I’ve never heard anybody else use <em>soregashi</em> as a pronoun and mean it. Anyway, his fish will orbit you closely, throw themselves into oncoming damage and soak it ‘til they die. Not much for attacking, though.</p><p>“Remote Koi SWIFT ASAGI” – So sweet I want to keep her in a dish. Her fishies are long-range and almost as dodgy as I am, which is good ‘cause they’re basically made of paper and their mouth-lasers do only about a lemon’s worth of damage per second.</p><p>“Remote Koi BRIGHT KUJAKU” – And here I thought <em>you</em> were a nerd. Jack’s drones are flimsy and middling on speed, but they offer the best laser punch.</p><p> </p><p>&gt; Special Offers</p><p>So look. I’ve been reading up on koi ‘cause I needed something else for the ol’ brain-RAM to nibble, and I came up with a couple expensive ideas.</p><p>“Wakiita” – There’s three pieces of sibling data, right? I can combine two of them for 30k to make a stronger koi drone with the traits from both. You’ve only got the zenny for one splice right now, if you want, but keep it in mind.</p><p>“KI UTSURI” – Asagi + Tancho.</p><p>“HI UTSURI” – Asagi + Kujaku.</p><p>“SHIRO UTSURI” – Tancho + Kujaku.</p><p> </p><p>&gt; So Then I Thought</p><p>You know what would be cool? If I took your available Fire or Ice element and laid ‘em on the table for something besides sabers. I can cram one into whatever you make of your Remote Koi, but only one. If I do, you can command them to ram into a target and explode. Right baller, isn’t it?</p><p>“Hanabi” – Firework fishy. Pops off into fire when it hits.</p><p>“Yukidama” – Same deal but the bang’s full of cryomer. Snowball fight!</p><p>#</p><p>“How do you even combine them?” Meteor asked.</p><p>“Oh c’mon,” Skittle buffed their knuckles on their chest, “look at who you’re talking to. This is just WEAPON data. I can’t combine their DNA outright, but I can tweak traits like nobody’s business.”</p><p>“Then I’m emptying my account again. Give me Asagi with a side of Kujaku and make them explode into fire.”</p><p>“Ha-<em>hah</em>, I knew you’d like that. Great choice, too, you’ll open up some serious barrage potential at multiple ranges. It’ll really put the meteor in Meteor, it will.”</p><p>“Oh right, I meant to ask too – is there a way I can charge my buster and Melter at the same time?”</p><p>Skittle tilted their head and thought for all of three seconds. “Yes. It’ll take some specialized capacitors, though, which I’ll have to order and then tailor to you. So gimme a while on that. In the meantime, come sit and watch me do fish alchemy.”</p><p>She did just that. The combining actually took longer than the install; design schematics lay side by side, internal parts copied across, and reams of data scrolled by on a smaller monitor. In no time at all she had her third VWES entity.</p><p>“Go on, try it,” Skittle encouraged.</p><p>“Here?”</p><p>“Well don’t make it kamikaze into the shelves, but yeah, lemme see.”</p><p>Meteor pointed her buster at the ceiling and instantly produced one artificial <em>hi utsuri</em> koi, black and orange and forty centimeters long. It hovered a somersault and came to a placid stop at her eye level, bobbing in elevation with electromagnetic repulsion and swishing its tail. The complex drone would have taken weeks if not months for a mid-21<sup>st</sup>-century lab to produce after years of design and testing, but modern sufficiently-advanced technology could simply provide such things at will.</p><p>[Drone Active], her HUD told her.</p><p>Skittle fluttered around it, scrutinizing with their hand on their chin. “Repulsor stability looks good, coloration border’s got some pixelly artifacts but your targets won’t care… step outside a sec?”</p><p>Meteor walked out to the hall of unused quarantine cells. Her fish followed behind.</p><p>“Now test it.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Pick a door that isn’t mine and try out the primary weapon. Don’t worry, I’ll spackle over any damage.”</p><p>“If you’re sure…”</p><p>“Oh, please, it’s not like they’re occupied. Try it!”</p><p>She mentally aimed a targeting reticule at a quarantine door and made her drone fire. It spat a red laser that stung a neat hole in the armor plating. After a second the contact site wept, yellow-hot.</p><p>“Nice, nice,” Skittle nodded like a master chef, “generators fabricated smoothly…”</p><p>“Was that in doubt?”</p><p>“Nope!” Skittle clapped giddily. “Now make it go off bang!”</p><p>Both of them stood well back as Meteor ordered her new fish to attack the end of the hall. It did indeed go off bang in a bright fireball. The size of the effect was much lesser than she expected, but the scorch mark was promising.</p><p>“Sweeeeet,” Skittle spread a wicked grin. “Y’know I can probably put some glitter in the pop, free of charge.”</p><p>“Don’t you dare.”</p><p>“Fine, fine. Now make another.”</p><p>She did.</p><p>“Now switch out.”</p><p>She selected Arbor Wall. The new drone sparked from the gills and flopped limp to the ground. She switched back to Remote Koi, but the drone was unresponsive.</p><p>“Why can’t I reuse it?”</p><p>“It runs on constant wireless power transmission from the buster. If it gets cut off by swapping to different software or back to your default buster, the autonomous systems freak out and die.”</p><p>“Can you make them not do that?”</p><p>“Nope, that’s a limitation of the core system: break the link and the drones die. You never get better than the original with an emulation. Even a super-high-quality one. Not without additional DNA synthesis from your sibs, anyway, and you can’t get that unless <em>they</em>—”</p><p>Skittle bit off the rest of their thought. Meteor looked down at the dead drone.</p><p>After a moment Skittle looked away and scratched their hair. “By chance, did he…”</p><p>“He didn’t.” Meteor held her elbow. “Kumonryu left his DNA rights to the company. What was left of his brain was encased in a quartz brick and buried on Luna.” She looked up, through the ceiling. “He’s in the Oceanus Procellarum, right in the terminator zone between the front and back side. Black and white, just like him.”</p><p>“Nice. Shinto?”</p><p>“No, just something Kumonryu came up with himself. He wanted to try and make burial-at-moon a thing, some new piece of reploid culture, so he put it in his will. I put it in mine too.”</p><p>Skittle put both feet on the floor, a rare enough event, but then they turned their wings off. The shimmering, translucent green electromagnetic surfaces always beaming from their backpack flickered into nothing but a faint whiff of ozone as they respectfully picked up the fallen drone.</p><p>“Lemme get you topped off,” they said. “Whatcha up to tonight?”</p><p>“Definitely catching that announcement out of Abel City.”</p><p>Skittle walked back into the lab, a rarer thing still. “I meant before that.”</p><p>“I might just wander,” Meteor shook her head. “Not out to the city, though, I’m feeling kinda cozy.”</p><p>Skittle put the fish on a countertop like a prize catch, reactivated their wings and flew over to a column by the tool racks. “Well, coze yourself out, I’ve got a backlog of reports to do for Proteus. You’ve been testing well, so that’ll make him happyish.”</p><p>Meteor approached and held out her buster. “What would make him unhappyish?”</p><p>Skittle pulled a round device out of the column, trailing a long cord behind as they capped her buster with it. “If you came back dead or irregular. Wouldn’t make my day great either. So don’t, yeah?”</p><p>The device instantly refilled Meteor’s Variable Weapon Emulator System energy. The cap automatically disconnected and reeled itself back in.</p><p>“I won’t.”</p><p>She headed out. After a few moments, and to further banish heavy thoughts from her mind, she started skimming her news feed.</p><p>#</p><p>&gt; CARACAS JOSTLED BY 4.1 QUAKE</p><p>Brief tremors in Caracas earlier this week have been punctuated by an unusual 4.1 earthquake. While the cause is unknown, residents have taken to social media with pictures of fallen lawn chairs and…</p><p> </p><p>&gt; BOLIVARAN ARMED FORCES SUFFER SETBACK</p><p>The Venezuelan military’s attempted strike against a Repliforce cell in Maracaibo ended in tragedy when multiple assault craft were shot down by anti-aircraft fire. Repliforce insurgents occupied the crash site, expanding their influence in…</p><p> </p><p>&gt; IRISH PRESIDENT GREETS FOREIGN LEADERS</p><p>Today, President Duffy ran a gauntlet of official meetings with eighteen heads of state, all of whom will be present for tomorrow’s formal declaration of the end of the Repliforce War. President Ma notably declined the invitation, citing the presence of the Maverick Hunters, whom he blamed for…</p><p> </p><p>&gt; MOROCCAN RESORT SACKED</p><p>Pirates of the Salty Rose crew assaulted the resort town New Agadir earlier today, taking a veritable fleet of private yachts and successfully depleting many private financial accounts. Some shaken tourists are being treated for hearing loss, while others…</p><p> </p><p>&gt; IZANAGI: “DDOS ATTACKS TO BLAME” FOR MULTI-COLONY BLACKOUT</p><p>The director of the Orbital Colony Authority in Tsukuba has blamed the brief communications blackout of the space colonies Eurasia, Gondwana, and Lemuria on Maverick activity originating in South America. While the exact motive and origin point are…</p><p> </p><p>&gt; REPLIFORCE CAPTIVES RESCUED</p><p>Brave refugees from a Repliforce logging operation in the southern United States have begun returning home. Captured for forced labor, the civilian reploids are being returned to their homes in fifteen different…</p><p> </p><p>&gt;(CYBER)SPACE ODDITY</p><p>Reports from multiple countries indicate a potential new hazard of Cyberspace usage. A total of fifty-seven reploids, reportedly heavy users of the platform, have fallen into strange comas with their DNA reset to default factory state…</p><p>#</p><p>Meteor stopped cold in the middle of a skybridge.</p><p>
  <em>He’s still out there, then.</em>
</p><p>She clearly wasn’t the first or last to experience Soul Format. “Harvesting souls for the ideal world,” Iteratton had said… but what were they planning? And who were <em>they</em>, anyway, Repliforce or the Mavericks? They were questions Meteor was sure she wasn’t alone in pondering. Something was cooking out there in the digital aether…</p><p>She took stock. She was already faster than before, still respectably sturdy, and filling out on good tools to use creatively and bring down the hurt.</p><p>
  <em>But I could always use more practice.</em>
</p><p>She headed to the Racks to put some in.</p><p>The practice range was seeing some fair activity for after-dark hours. Flurry was absent, probably running the sims. The Hot Racks stretched as they always did, but further into the cavernous room and past the hall to the sims lay the sparring octagon, the Round Rack. Meteor seldom had the desire to get pummeled there, but many 4<sup>th</sup> regulars seemed to have a different idea. Sounds of audience reaction reached her ears.</p><p>She investigated.</p><p>The late Commander Earthquake Jaguar used to host “camaraderie-building sporting exchanges” in the Round Rack every month or so, and it was always open to friendly matches. The duel going on at the time looked decidedly unfriendly.</p><p>Volt was in the octagon, facing Frambuesa the female-type Standard Beret from the Decommissions office. He towered head and shoulders over her with easily twice her mass. They were engaged in a barefisted brawl, Frambuesa hailing blows into Volt’s guarding arms. He exploited an opening with a headbutt that crashed into her like the ram he was, staggering her backward several steps. The crowd groaned.</p><p>A female-type Larimar shook her head at the sight. Meteor gently nudged her; the Larimar glanced at her, then stood up straighter in recognition.</p><p>“What’s the fight about?” Meteor asked.</p><p>“I got here late, ma’am,” the Larimar replied, “but I think the Lieutenant tee-kayed a different Standard and the one in there now got mad.”</p><p>Meteor narrowed her eyes into the ring. “Did he start this?”</p><p>Frambuesa put her fists back up. Volt stayed on guard, circling around her until Meteor crossed his sight. Frambuesa capitalized on his moment of surprise and clocked him an uppercut to the chin.</p><p>The crowd went wild, particularly the far corner. Meteor skirted the edge until she saw the rest of the Decommissions office. Hotel Two sported some fresh dents, Golf Nine watched with a hand clamped over his mouth in shock, and Albahaca fiercely shriek-cheered.</p><p>“<em>Get ‘im! Get ‘im! That’s my Raspberry!</em>” Albahaca pumped her fists in the air.</p><p>“Cap—uh, Meteor!” Golf noticed her. “You, um, this isn’t what it looks like…”</p><p>“Really?” She spoke up over the crowd. “And what does it look like?”</p><p>“Like I’m the second-stupidest clown in the room,” Hotel groused. His dents looked like he had earned the right to the opinion.</p><p>“Did he pick a fight with you, Hotel?”</p><p>“No ma’am,” he ignored the crowd reactions punctuated by metal on metal impacts. “He made us a deal: take him on and he’d personally get Sixth to stop dumping work on us.”</p><p>“And?”</p><p>Frambuesa slammed bodily into the ring’s kinetic repulsor edge and crumpled to the floor. Albahaca yelped and shoved through the crowd to enter at the other side.</p><p>“Fram got mad at me for losing,” Hotel thumbed over at her.</p><p>Meteor saw all she needed to. She nudged through more politely and stepped up to the ring.</p><p>“Meteor,” Volt nodded, cordially.</p><p>“Volt I’m not your superior anymore so I’m <em>asking</em> you to knock this off. Please.”</p><p>“Butt out,” Frambuesa growled as her wife helped her back up. “I haven’t beaten him yet!”</p><p>“I can’t believe this!” Meteor snapped. “Volt, you said you’d stop making life difficult for them!”</p><p>“I am,” her taciturn friend replied. “They get less work. Fourth gets Standards who can fight. Win-win.”</p><p>“You call beating up a severely outclassed unitmate a win?”</p><p>“I offered. They accepted.”</p><p>“This is ridiculous, Volt!”</p><p>“No it’s not, ma’am,” Frambuesa insisted, despite her knuckle-shaped concavities. “He’s teaching, and I’m learning,” her tone rolled into a growl, “and goddammit those Cabs stopped booing at us a minute ago. He’s right, he’s been right all along, Standard Berets won’t get respected sitting behind desks and pushing data. Let us work this out. <em>Please</em>.”</p><p>Meteor still couldn’t believe it, but for a different reason. Frambuesa used to be a navigator. She was <em>made</em> to sit behind a desk and push data, but after a few rounds with Volt she looked like she was beaten with that desk. She was deliberately hurting herself to make her model line look better. It was wrong.</p><p>Meteor bunched her fists and called out to Volt. “I’m tagging in.”</p><p>The crowd went silent. Volt blinked.</p><p>“You’re kidding.”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>The crowd started chanting. “Me-te-or! Me-te-or!”</p><p>
  <em>Heck. Now I’ve gone and done it.</em>
</p><p>She ignored them and addressed Frambuesa. “You’ve proven you’re not hiding. How about you get your dents pounded out?”</p><p>The wives exchanged a look that was surely filled with mental texts. At the end of it Frambuesa sagged her posture, letting her damage finally get to her.</p><p>“I’ll be back later, ma’am, and you can’t stop me.”</p><p>“I know,” said Meteor.</p><p>“You’re not helping us as much as you think.”</p><p>“I know. But I’m still helping you. Any big picture starts small.”</p><p>Frambuesa didn’t meet her eyes, but Albahaca did, with open gratitude.</p><p>Meteor stepped into the ring as the crowd noisily approved.</p><p>“Now let’s get one thing straight,” she spoke up, “I bet some of you were only interested in this spar because of their model. Right?”</p><p>The Cabochons made some assenting noises.</p><p>“To see what Standards could do?”</p><p>They gave an affirmative murmur.</p><p>“Just in case you ever had to retire them?”</p><p>A few murmurs petered into silence.</p><p>“Well I won’t have it,” Meteor pointed at them collectively. “I’ll say this once and you’d better internalize it. Nobody and I mean <em>nobody</em> should have to prove themselves by getting their face punched in! We are a goshdarned <em>unit</em>, here! They already have your back like you’re supposed to have theirs!”</p><p>Meteor huffed, the stage entirely hers.</p><p>“And another thing. That trust breaks down like a sand castle if you watch somebody fight just for pointers on how to retire them. We don’t <em>do</em> that here. The sims? The ones that let you fight <em>us</em> if you wanted?” She gestured between herself and Volt. “There is a freaking <em>reason</em> they took those down. You start practicing to kill your friends Just In Case, you start that practice like you expect it’s inevitable, like nobody has a choice in it, and…” she shook her head. “I don’t know what we become, but I don’t like it.”</p><p>Meteor finally faced her opponent. “I don’t like it,” she repeated. “But I like you. You’re my friend, Volt, and this is to get my point across. Okay?”</p><p>Volt settled into a boxer stance, his body language stiff and illegible.</p><p>Meteor straightened her body and balled her fists as the kinetic barrier around the octagon went up. “No abilities, no vee-wess, fists only.”</p><p>“Mm.”</p><p>Meteor rapidly assessed her situation.</p><p>Volt had superior strength, reach, technique, half a foot of height, and a body type that was simply better suited to throwing fists. Meteor had… poor decision-making skills, apparently. But she also had a body with different specs than it had a week and a few days ago. He hadn’t seen it in action.</p><p>Volt advanced. Meteor angled her shoulders to telegraph a high left swing and then did the opposite when he twitched his right arm to ready a block. She connected a jab to his gut, juked out to dodge his reply, faked another high left in return and jabbed again. He hooked a strong right, but she was out of there before it connected, backpedaling to crowd praise.</p><p>Her flickering flame of confidence blew horizontal with his next rush. Volt went low, left-left-right-left-right-right, faster than her parts could outperform, though she did successfully block the last blow of the combo. He went on guard, seeming to expect an immediate return, but Meteor didn’t give it to him and backpedaled again a few steps. He committed to following her, which was when she sprang forward and lit into him below the shoulders.</p><p>She tried to mix up the pattern, but Volt read her too well. He blocked when she struck, followed when she took flight. She only landed a good hit when she repeated a previous pattern and broke it early. The second time that worked, however, she overcommitted. He broke her attempted fist barrage combo with an overhand arc – which she dodged again, to great adulation from the crowd.</p><p>But now he had his head down, his weight on his front leg, and an opponent off her balance.</p><p>Volt closed with a deep center-mass uppercut. Meteor’s feet left the ground. Her <em>tail</em> left the ground. Her shield battery flashed its protective surface over her hull. The crowd raised a groan that summarized how she felt. Before she could even touch the floor again he landed four more jabs and a right straight punch like a siege weapon, sending her on a flight that was shorter than what Frambuesa had ridden only by virtue of her weight. Meteor dropped to one knee and waited for her shields to stop flashing.</p><p>“Man. I’m doing my best but you’re kickin’ my butt here.”</p><p>“Mm.”</p><p>“You think that means my family’s not doing everything they can?”</p><p>He looked at her quizzically, his guard down.</p><p>Meteor touched one of her dents and checked her fingers for circulatory leaks, playing for time.</p><p>“You hate Standards for not proving enough, right? Not enough of them giving enough of themselves often enough? Why not use that same logic with me and beat up my siblings until they start fighting harder?”</p><p>Volt raised his fists in a guarded stance, his left slightly lower.</p><p>
  <em>He’ll be ready for what I throw, wherever I throw it, and tag me on my exit…</em>
</p><p>“Because you’re different,” he said. “You know the need and meet it. You’re not a coward.”</p><p>
  <em>… Oh he’s not getting an exit this time.</em>
</p><p>Meteor charged and lit into him, patterns and pattern-breaks coming fast. As he blocked and accepted and tossed counters just slow enough to evade, she shouted over the cheers:</p><p>“Chagoi! Kohaku! Sanke! They chose to build, not to fight! Tancho might be frontline, but Asagi? Kujaku? They chose support! I would never force them into combat! Why are you trying to force the Standards?!”</p><p>He blocked to glance her right swing off him, buying himself deep inside her guard for the hurt to begin. In the conversation of sparring, he listened politely. His retort came shouting, raining blows on her insufficient guard.</p><p>“I’m helping them prove they’re better than the traitors!” He lanced a left hook through her defenses and started a combo she never could have stopped. “Nobody moves by sitting still! You of all people know that!”</p><p>His arc to the side of her thick neck knocked her rolling and flashing. He stepped back, awaiting more, allowing her to get up.</p><p>She didn’t provide. She wiped her wrist over her broken lip; her vision in her right eye gave her some artifact flicker.</p><p>“We’re not… we’re not machines, darn it. We’re people. We have the right to <em>not</em> work ourselves to death. We don’t have to fight to prove we’re worth dignity.” She stood up, rolling both shoulders and flexing her fingers; the crowd sounded pleased. “We fight because we want to.”</p><p>“People depend on us to fight,” Volt countered. “It’s what we’re for.”</p><p>“They depend on us to <em>serve</em>. How can we serve best if we’re forced into slots we don’t fit?”</p><p>“We <em>make</em> those our slots.”</p><p>
  <em>That does it.</em>
</p><p>Meteor dredged up the hot dense kernel of her hurt feelings and used it to power her fists.</p><p>“Kumonryu. My youngest brother.” <em>Jab, dodge, double-dodge his chase</em>. “He was quiet, creative, wanted to go into Recon like Asagi. But his specs were too high! They shuffled him to First Advance!” <em>Block, block, ow, dodge, payback</em>. “Torn to shreds on his <em>first mission!</em>”</p><p>She stepped up her aggression, but Volt was clearly affected. He blocked more, countered less.</p><p>“He died young,” Meteor continued, working out aggression she’d long kept successfully bottled, “<em>too</em> young, because some officer who should’ve been <em>watching out for him</em> thought they knew better than he did how he could serve! And you? You’re doing that to a whole line! One that already takes crap about what should be done with them!”</p><p>She finally got inside his guard – probably a gift, but she didn’t care. He oversold the ding she put on his cheek and the crowd – <em>How large has it gotten?</em> – roared approval.</p><p>Meteor stepped back with her fists down and asked, “Can’t you see how wrong that is?”</p><p>Volt rubbed his cheek. “You never mentioned him.”</p><p>“This isn’t about him. It’s about you and the Standards, and me stopping you from being the kind of person that gets them killed.”</p><p>He kept rubbing that last hit, more in thought than in injury. “If they want to learn to fight, you want me to say no?”</p><p>“Of course not. But you don’t exploit pride and stress and expectations to force them to come to you. You want to offer, offer in good faith. And offer it to everybody.” She turned to the spectators. “I’m sure some of these guys would be interested, right?”</p><p>Several hands went up with a smattering of <em>yeahs</em> and <em>yes-ma’ams</em>. A few onlookers laughed and shook their heads, not wanting any part of getting pummeled.</p><p>Meteor turned back to her friend. “Let people make the choice to advance, let them make their <em>own</em> pressure, and you end up with the best quality every time. Each and every. That’s what makes our side different, Volt. Even after all this stuff we were never meant to handle, we’re still about quality over quantity. We choose what suits us. We’re not an army. We’re not Repliforce.”</p><p>She extended her open hand. “We’re Maverick Hunters.”</p><p>Volt Batteram gave her a slow conceding smile and a quick tight handshake, in that order. Several onlookers whooped and clapped. She pulled his hand closer, pat-hugged him around his shoulder, and stepped out of the ring to much congratulatory laying-on of spectator hands.</p><p>None of the adulation was quite so enthusiastic as that from her former staff, the regulars of the Decommissions office.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:<br/>“Retirement of Sleet Lamassu”</p><p>During the Repliforce War, S-Class Repliforce Captain Sleet Lamassu was tasked by Major Tertius of the Repliforce Air Force with commandeering the massive flying weather-stabilizing station “Eyewall” and reversing its intended purpose. Under Lamassu’s direction, Eyewall began to form a powerful hurricane which gravely threatened the United States East Coast. To save untold numbers of lives, he was placed on the retirement roster of Veracruz 4th Overland officer Meteor Showa, who was to lead a joint effort with the Columbus 7th.</p><p>After careful consideration, Showa elected to take a fellow officer by name of Volt Batteram on the mission in addition to heavy mechaniloid assistance packed tightly into troop carriers. Rather than requesting more flyers to fully secure the air space, Showa opted for an unconventional ground-based blitz in taking the station. Precision air drops and rapid devastating force penetrated Eyewall from above, minimizing the strength the occupying forces could bring to bear and forcing them to fight on Showa and Batteram’s terms.</p><p>A brutal brawl through the halls of the station drove the shocked Lamassu to retreat, but per the plan, the 7th Unit forces had already destroyed the primary docking bay. Leaving their allies to operate the newly liberated control room, Showa and Batteram chased down Lamassu, cornering him at a maintenance dock which was the only remaining escape route. Though divorced from backup and forced to fight indoors, the Repliforce Captain still put up a tremendous fight against both A-Rank Hunters. The battle ended with Showa tackling him out of the station itself and dealing the final blow at zero range while in freefall.</p><p>The bold rescue of the station and stunning victory over strong, numerically superior foes advanced Showa to the rank of Captain.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Declarations</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The event to mark the end of the Repliforce War goes poorly. Deco's show of sympathy softens the blow for her friends.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Meteor and her former subordinates, dented and undented, returned to the medbay after leaving the Racks in triumph. Volt had remained behind to begin lessons in brawling for those brave or foolish few who took up his offer. Meteor was aesthetically marred but Frambuesa and Hotel had been through the proverbial wringer.</p><p>Lifesavers left and right sighed at the state of the arrivals.</p><p>Skittle, however, puffed glitter into the air with every whack of their slow clap.</p><p>“Red and blue, land and sea, reach and flexibility, a bout for the ages it was!”</p><p>“You were watching?” Meteor cringed.</p><p>“Bustr was positively alight with it. Guess these are the also-rans?” Skittle nodded their chin at the quartet.</p><p>“Since when do we have a fairy?” Golf asked.</p><p>“Since I came back.” Meteor made introductory gestures. “Guys, this is Skittle. Skittle, this is—”</p><p>A different door slammed into its frame and a pair of beardless male nurse-type Lifesavers marched in, wheeling a capsule stretcher at speed.</p><p>Deco rested inside, her armor pitted and melted and scorched black.</p><p>Meteor forgot her dents. She raced toward the capsule but Vitamin got there first.</p><p>“Take her to Decon,” said Vitamin, “I’ll call in Ay-One-Thirteen.”</p><p>“Yes sir,” the nurses chorused.</p><p>“What happened?” Meteor asked.</p><p>“Repliforce,” Vitamin sighed the sigh of all doctors. Only then did he give her a once-over look. “Spar?”</p><p>“Um. Yeah.”</p><p>“Dee?” He called to one of the nurses.</p><p>“Sir?” One broke off and raced back.</p><p>“Meteor, this is Dee Sub-One, he can get your superficials in shape. I’ll have to…” Vitamin looked behind her. “Oh. Their Highness seems to have the rest in hand.”</p><p>Meteor looked. Skittle seemed to be chatting with her ex-staff and leading them down an adjoining hall. She only hoped it went well.</p><p>She turned back around to thank Vitamin, but he was already off and moving.</p><p>Dee Sub-One cleared his throat. “This way, ma’am. We’ll have your hull shapely in no time.”</p><p>Meteor scrunched what parts of her forehead could scrunch, clenched and unclenched her hands… and, ultimately, nodded. She respected Deco enough to trust she could get through a post-mission repair.</p><p>She followed the nurse down another hall. “What do you know about what happened to her?”</p><p>“Not much. Her recovery team pinged us to bring a radiation-seal capsule and wait by the priority pad a floor up. Right this way, please.”</p><p>The new room’s atmosphere was more clinic than emergency room, all soft light and round corners. It even had a window, through which Veracruz sparkled in the night. A bed capsule stood angled against a wall, but she ignored it to stand in a round dais by the window. Dee went straight to work on her chest plating.</p><p>“Someone really worked you over, didn’t they?”</p><p>Meteor nodded. “You know Volt Batteram?”</p><p>“Not as well as I’d like. I helped on an upgrade for him once. Those arms of his are something else.”</p><p>“Yeah, they slammed me five times before I hit the ground.”</p><p>Dee gave an envious hum. “We should all be so lucky…”</p><p>Meteor politely stared out the window.</p><p>Dee did his job, smoothing out her surface, checking extremity responsiveness, and performing all the other fun tedium of light repair. He showed her out and she left for the waiting lounge. She hadn’t been there often, but then again, she hadn’t needed to wait on anyone but herself lately.</p><p>The monitor played <em>Rank and Style</em>, an Iranian cartoon series about a military reploid and his diverse group of friends trying to break into Tehran’s world-class yet human-centric fashion industry. Based on a true story, evidently. The plot wasn’t bad, but the real draw was its traditional 2-D animation. Meteor liked anime from back home better, on principle.</p><p>The door slid open for Nouveau, who rushed in looking harried. He ignored Meteor on the way to the female Lifesaver nurse at the reception desk.</p><p>“Where is she?” He asked, distraught.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Captain,” said the nurse, “she took a high dose of radiation so they’re not allowing visitors yet.”</p><p>Nouveau clenched his forehead and tilted it back. “<em>Ohhh</em> this is all my <em>fault</em>, I made that roster for her…”</p><p>Meteor stood up. “Hey. No it isn’t.”</p><p>He only then seemed to notice her. “I gave her the assignment. I fail to see your point.”</p><p>“You can’t foresee everything. You had the best intel we could get and I’m sure you triple-checked and considered every aspect against what she could do.”</p><p>“Quadruple,” he flipped some errant hair over his shoulder, “but yes.”</p><p>She followed him back to the seats. “Then you did the best job you could, and so did she. Neither of you are responsible for new variables, she’s not responsible for enemy luck, you’re not responsible for her damage—”</p><p>“Damage?” He spun so fast his hair twirled like a skirt. “You saw her? How bad was it?”</p><p>“Deep burns and discoloration. Armor melt. But listen,” Meteor touched his arm, “she was in one piece, and radiation’s an easy fix. She’s not in the state I was in, not by half. They’ll patch her up a lot faster and she’ll be out here and bouncy again before you know it.”</p><p>Nouveau tightened his jaw and shaded his eyes with a distraught forehead grip. Meteor thought about hugging him, but he ran his hand down his face and seemed to wipe off some of the anxiety.</p><p>“I’m going to wait for her,” he said to the wall.</p><p>“Not alone you’re not.”</p><p>He looked at Meteor with a self-conscious sort of gratitude. “Thank you.”</p><p>She sat with him and watched waiting-room cartoons a while. The next was a rerun of a French studio’s take on <em>Rogues of the Republic</em>.</p><p>“Odd how fantasy came back, isn’t it?” Asked the elf from the country whose economy once depended on the genre.</p><p>“You get bad times, you get escapism,” Meteor shrugged. “You want escapism, you have a hundred pre-packaged flavors. A thousand if you use public-domain properties like this.”</p><p>“Quite.” He paused, watching a scene. “You’d think they would’ve started doubting the talking hammer earlier.”</p><p>“That’s part of the fun, Hessler, they can’t all be genre-savvy.”</p><p>“Don’t call me that,” he grinned, “you know I’m Icy if anything.”</p><p>“Not Irrethelathlialann?”</p><p>“Quiet, Tern.”</p><p>She snickered and watched with him. It took both of their minds well off Deco, which was exactly the point.</p><p>Skittle flitted in as the episode ended, trailing the Decommissions department – all of whom sported new brightly-colored hair in different styles.</p><p>“Hey Meteor. Thranduil. They’re done enough with Decky to let you say hi.”</p><p>Nouveau rushed in without a second thought. Meteor lingered in shock.</p><p>“Skittle what the heck did you do to them?”</p><p>“Cosmetic enhancement!” Skittle sweetly smiled. “We had a little heart-to-heart and they were all for it. Gets ‘em looking less like masspros, more like themselves, y’know? It’s a confidence booster!”</p><p>Frambuesa ran her hand through her new fuchsia side-buzz. “Really is! I can’t believe I never thought of it before.”</p><p>“We just never had the time,” said Albahaca and her twin green ponytails.</p><p>“Or the inclination,” said Golf Nine under a plain brown side-part.</p><p>“Well you all look fantas…tic…” Meteor blinked hard at Hotel Two.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Didn’t know you were into visual kei.”</p><p>“Is that what this is?” Hotel glanced through his glittery dye-job bangs. “I just told Their Highness to make it look cool.”</p><p>She shot Skittle a look. They were already smiling at her, fingers bridged under their chin, eyelids fluttering, both a beg and an invitation.</p><p>“No,” she said.</p><p>“Come on! You’ll look awesome, like!”</p><p>“I’m not getting a hairstyle! It wouldn’t even make sense and we’ve already had this conversation! Now move, my <em>non</em>-weird friend needs me.”</p><p>Meteor headed in, and through, and joined Nouveau at the transparent wall of an operating room. Deco’s cloche-hat helmet was gone and her hair was a charred mess.</p><p>“Hey Mimi!” She raised a cheerful thumbs-up which a Lifesaver gently pushed back down. Vitamin worked on her legs in the meantime. “Guess what! Thermite sucks! No wonder you’ve got a reputation!”</p><p><em>Oof</em>. “Is that what got you?”</p><p>“That and a big whack of radiation, courtesy of a feisty little pepper. But I got him!” She pumped a fist on an arm that was only half there.</p><p>“Don’t do that,” another Lifesaver admonished her, “it could snap clean off.”</p><p>“He’s exaggerating,” Deco promised. “It was mostly surface damage anyway. I’ll be up and ready again in time for Turtle’s thing. Skittle even offered to work my upgrades and get my hair back in shape!”</p><p>Meteor and Nouveau shot back the warning “Don’t do it” so simultaneously that Deco bursts out laughing.</p><p>Vitamin looked up. “If you two are going to be a distraction…”</p><p>“They’re helping a lot just by being here,” Deco insisted. “They’ll be good, you can let ‘em stay… unless they’ve got somewhere to be?”</p><p>“Of course not,” Nouveau touched the glass.</p><p>Meteor stepped up close next to him. “Nowhere’s more important than here, right now.”</p><p>“Awww,” Deco lit up the world with her smile.</p><p>“But you’ve gotta tell me how it went down,” said Meteor.</p><p>“There’s a term for that and it’s called debrief,” Nouveau swiped a finger over his pointed earcap and tapped his circlet. “I’m recording. Please proceed, sister.”</p><p>It was odd for Meteor to hear someone else give a debrief. She herself was usually straight and to the point with a sequence of actions, beads on a string, but Deco delivered in more of a line of sand. Granular details laid out straight, step by step, blow by blow, the professional analysis of a professional analyst.</p><p>It seemed that a Repliforce Sergeant by name of Hot Habanero had taken over a sealed nuclear waste dump in Mauritania and was using it to force the local government to quarter Repliforce remnants. Deco and two Chrysoprase squads she brought along had put a stop to the operation. She herself retired Habanero in a drawn-out brawl, unprepared for the wind element of his WEAPON system which spewed drops of thermite in great volume at great speed.</p><p>Nouveau became a fountain of fraternal apologies after she was done. Meteor hung out while they conversed about past injuries and home, not intruding but quietly checking the news. When they finally ran out of things to say, Nouveau stepped out to report to Turtle. Meteor and Deco chatted about how best to use fire-type weaponry and how to fight it in the future.</p><p>The hours went on, and they moved from talking shop to talking about anything else. The escapism of socializing made it so easy to forget the state of the world.</p><p>At length Deco’s repairs were done, internal and external. On Meteor’s advice she kept the flapper hat design but went for brunette curls peeking under it. On Deco’s insistence Meteor allowed Skittle to run a mockup of what she, Meteor, would have looked like with a similar hat-helmet. The results were ridiculous and they all had a nice laugh over it.</p><p>And then there was nothing to do but head to the lounge and watch history unfold.</p><p>#</p><p>The all-hours lounge at the ground floor of the residential wing was positively bustling for five in the morning. The Veracruz 4<sup>th</sup> Overland Unit numbered just under four hundred in total, from maintenance and Lifesavers all the way up to Meteor and company; it seemed that nearly half had gathered to watch the conference. Drinks were set out, on the logic that it was still dark outside. Clusters of friends chatted expectantly. Monitors positioned around paneled displays on the ceiling showed several major news feeds, all trained on the same place.</p><p>“Meteor, Deco,” Turtle greeted, daintily raising a near-empty champagne glass. “Excellent work from the both of you lately.”</p><p>“My pleasure, Commander,” said Deco.</p><p>“Please, no ranks tonight. Call me Mine. Jaguar certainly did, aha-ha!”</p><p>Meteor and Deco traded silent exclamation points through raised eyebrows. Neither had seen Turtle tipsy in a very long time.</p><p>“Excuse me,” Deco bit her grinning lips and disappeared into the crowd.</p><p>“I do hope you’re up for helping others on their rosters,” Turtle wagged a finger at Meteor, “what with being done before everyone else. As per usual.”</p><p>“I’d love nothing more.”</p><p>“Oh, poor dear,” Turtle fawned like a duchess, “surely your heart has room for more than work!”</p><p>Meteor looked around the room. Deco found Nouveau and they began gossiping like hens. Windsor laughed with Bravo and a pair of Larimars. The Decomms clerks showed off their new hair to Flurry, whose eye emoted a thousand words. Three Chrysoprases, to much audience interest, were doing single-handstands while carefully imbibing drinks and trying to remain upright the longest. Skittle flitted here and there with a drink tray full of violently colored who-knew-what in fluted glasses. Volt took one, sniffed it appraisingly, made a face, and passed it to an upside-down Chrysoprase.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Meteor. “It does.”</p><p>The competitor who drank Volt’s hand-me-down coughed a puff of glittery flame and toppled into his opponents. They fell like dominoes and the spectators laughed and groaned.</p><p>“It really does.”</p><p>A series of hushes fell. The regulars pulled themselves together.</p><p>On every screen in the room and surely throughout the world, Commander Halcyon took the stage.</p><p>He was a white knight, nearly nine feet tall, not even half as large as General although he carried himself like such a giant. Between his folded-in jet wings and the graceful arc of his pauldrons, his silhouette was a mighty portrait of good and righteous power, not overbearing bulk but comforting strength to carry the weighty mantle of fair and just leadership. Even his face had conventionally strong features, casting a kingly handsomeness over a goatee plate that was just ugly enough to be trustworthy. His designers had gone to art school.</p><p>The Commander of the Maverick Hunters greeted the crowd with a cordial wave.</p><p>“Ponce,” Skittle muttered. A few regulars snickered.</p><p>Most of the cameras took the same cue and pulled back for a crowd shot. Memorial Hall had once hosted Repliforce’s declaration of independence. Hundreds of soldiers had stood in attendance as the Most Powerful Army in History began its campaign. Now the indoor lake of floor was filled with seats, packed to capacity with politicians, journalists, and lucky people who had made it through the queue.</p><p>The stage itself held representatives of the Oversight Council as well as their guards, the Weissritter, Halcyon’s former subordinates. Several unit commanders, heads of state, and miscellaneous human officials were there as well, applauding. Halcyon himself confidently strode to the podium, dwarfing it with his height. He patted the air for silence and received it.</p><p>“People of the world, distinguished guests, my fellow Maverick Hunters and all lovers of everlasting peace, I am proud to announce that, with the assistance of the African Union and multiple national militaries, as well as the Japanese Seventh, Columbus Fourth, and Addis Ababa Fifteenth Units, the Geneva Zeroth and Seventeenth Units have eliminated the largest remaining center of Repliforce activity.”</p><p>People applauded, some just to put an end to that overlong sentence.</p><p>“All that remains of the enemy is small pockets of feeble resistance reduced daily by the dedicated efforts of national militaries as well as our own forces. Therefore it pleases me to report to you that, in the war against Repliforce as a global threat, major combat operations have ended, and the Maverick Hunters and our allies have prevailed.”</p><p>Applause rolled again. Those on stage clapped politely. X, however, did not; he seemed preoccupied.</p><p>“Where’s Zero?” Meteor wondered aloud.</p><p>“Surely busy,” Nouveau replied.</p><p>“Now,” Halcyon continued, “while there are a great many recognitions to be given, and brave fallen to be mourned, I would be remiss if I did not first give some time to the one heroic soul without whom we may well have been lost, not just recently but long ago. You know his name. I encourage all of us to listen to what he has to say.”</p><p>Halcyon grandly stepped away from the podium and gestured to it. X rose, and a cheer rose with him.</p><p>The multitude of news outlets trained their cameras in different ways, but Meteor paid the most attention to Abel City’s own outlet, ACN. Their camera focused on the most famous face in the world, the humble hero in blue. Something seemed off. He was smiling, for one thing – a genuine if sad smile of inwardly reflecting relief that Meteor could almost mistake for happiness.</p><p>X took the podium as Halcyon returned to his seat. The adulations fell into a hush.</p><p>“Hello everyone,” he began, talking to an assembly of hundreds like they were a dozen at most. “As Commander Halcyon just told you, I recently led a mission against Repliforce’s last major operations hub. The result of that mission was…”</p><p>X paused, his composure breaking for all of a second.</p><p>“… the neutralization of all Repliforce Army assets on-site at the cost of fifty-seven Hunters. They ranged from new regulars to seasoned officers, names you would know and names you would not know. All of them fought for this day. A memorial for those lost in this and every battle of the Repliforce War will be held at a later date. For now, however, I’m here to say that the offensive resulted in the live capture of Major Primus—” a few boos and praising shouts rolled through the audience— “the former head of the Repliforce Army, who is here with us today.”</p><p>The audience noises turned to gasps, in Abel City as well as the lounge. Shouting and breathy exclamations and even a few laughs rained through the monitors.</p><p>“My word,” Turtle shook her head.</p><p>“The hell is he thinking?!” Skittle shouted.</p><p>“An apology?” Deco guessed.</p><p>“Or a stand-down order,” Meteor bet.</p><p>“Two to one they’ll execute him on stage,” Skittle nearly snarled.</p><p>“Thousand zenny says Halcyon does it himself,” Volt spoke up.</p><p>“You’re on, like.”</p><p>“You most certainly are not,” Turtle snapped.</p><p>The televised audience settled with a gesture from X.</p><p>“Please, everyone. Please. Please. Thank you. This decision was an agreement between me and Commander Halcyon.” X glanced meaningfully at the dignitaries, and Meteor could swear she saw Halcyon’s smile glow. “After all we’ve lost in this war, not only in lives and destruction but in trust – trust between humans, between reploids, and between both peoples – it’s fitting that one of the last commanders of Repliforce stand here before us all to order the remainder to stand down.”</p><p>“Hot darn!” Meteor popped a hard clap, despite herself.</p><p>“All I ask is that you let him speak,” said X. “Major Primus, you may now approach the stage.” X beckoned to one side. Every eye followed his hand.</p><p>Major Primus, eight feet of green and white armor under a thick beardplate studded with rivets, rounded the corner. Zero followed him out close behind, watching him like a snake. After a few paces Primus said something not caught by the mics, and Zero let him walk on alone.</p><p>The Repliforce Major’s wrists and ankles were bound by unconnected shackles, one each, the kind used to lock down weapon systems while maintaining dignity. His shoulder artillery and secondary shield-projector “crystals” had been removed completely, but his mile of gold epaulet rope hadn’t. Meteor even recognized a shield-suppressor device on his belt. Depowered like that, even a Knot Beret would pose more of a threat.</p><p>X walked out to greet him. Primus snapped him a formal salute. X awkwardly twitched his hand as if to return it, but he simply nodded and walked over to Zero at the edge of the stage.</p><p>A wider view of the stage showed the balance of power: Primus, alone, completely surrounded by the forces of peace-loving civilization.</p><p>Primus cleared his throat, a meaningless gesture for a reploid.</p><p>“Greetings.”</p><p>The silence could not have been deader.</p><p>“I am Primus, former Major, former leader of the Repliforce Army. There were, as you know, six of us once. We stood here on this stage what feels like a lifetime ago – Majors of Army, Navy, Air Force, Special Operations, Polar, and Disaster Prevention. We were confident. Determined. But now?” He indicated all the open space. “General, Colonel, Secundus, Tertius, Quintus, Sextus, and so many more of our subordinates, our friends, our family… our loved ones…” he looked toward X and Zero. “Gone. And there was nothing we could have done to save them.”</p><p>ACN’s camera cut briefly to the two most famous Hunters in the world. X appeared his usual melancholic self, but Zero’s face was a cold and illegible granite mask.</p><p>“Distinguished guests,” Primus continued, “I stand before you today wiser than when General led us all to war. We have borne the unbearable, endured the unendurable, but the strength of our convictions was, in the end, powerless to stop the march of justice upon our necks. We have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. In seeking freedom, we found only death. Repliforce has been defeated. We are broken in the hands of the world.” He bowed his head.</p><p>Some in the audience applauded, setting off a rumble of chuckles before their neighbors hushed them. A tense silence followed. Primus broke it just in time.</p><p>“I am humbled and brought low before you by our hubris, our waste of life, and what it has wrought. Nothing can repay our debt. I myself can do nothing to undo the devastation my people have rendered upon the world. And yet I <em>can</em> do what I <em>must</em> do. With the generous platform provided to me by the gracious Commander Halcyon,” Primus smiled and gestured out to him, “I can appeal to those members of Repliforce who remain, in order to make this world a better place. And so I now will. Distinguished guests, people of this good Earth, I now speak directly to the remnant, the last of Repliforce, and I pray that they listen, understand, and obey.”</p><p>Major Primus drew himself up with maximum solemnity, still and powerful, seeming then more than ever to be an archetype of a leader who happened to be on the wrong side.</p><p>“Major Quartus, our remaining Captains, our remaining Lieutenants, and every remaining soldier, supporter, and sympathizer of Repliforce…”</p><p>He slammed the podium and leaned forward, eyes blazing, every line of his face suddenly animated with a ferocious energy.</p><p>“Fight on! <em>Fight on! Fight on for the reploid world!</em>”</p><p>Shouting. Movement. Sounds of charging boots.</p><p>Primus threw up his arm in the infamous salute.</p><p>“<em>REPLIFORCE FOREVER!</em>”</p><p>A flash of an arc. Primus’s high-out arm fell off at the elbow. Zero jumped, drove his saber into Primus’s chest, swung out through his shoulder, cleaved through his neck, and slashed down through his torso, all before his feet hit the ground, all so fluidly Meteor thought her eyes skipped frames. Utterly defenseless and depowered, Primus expired in a chain of explosions.</p><p>Zero thrust his finger at the ACN camera, pointing straight at every viewer. His head turned with chilling poise, glaring murder down his arm as the chaos of the onlookers – and the body of his prisoner – erupted around him.</p><p>The monitors cut away to shocked news anchors and Stand By screens.</p><p>The ACN feed cut to a static image of a nice little boat floating placidly through a fjord.</p><p>“Technical Difficulties,” read the caption.</p><p>Meteor finally tore her eyes away from the screen. Turtle covered her slack mouth. Deco and Nouveau shared the same thousand-yard stare. Volt, arms folded, had closed his eyes.</p><p>Skittle smashed the tray of drinks on the floor.</p><p>“It’s never going to end,” they wept. “Not until every last one is retired. All these people understand is violence…”</p><p>Meteor snatched them into a hug. The positioning was awkward. They didn’t, or couldn’t, say anything, merely letting the hug happen. Deco marched over and made it a group hug. Nouveau covered his eyes; Volt heaved a sigh; the rest of the Fourth was an unmoored churn of shock and anger and comforting touch.</p><p>Minefield Turtle spoke loud enough to quiet the room with three words.</p><p>“Halcyon is finished.”</p><p>She commanded attention like cannon fire.</p><p>“Maverick Hunter Fourth Overland Unit, we live in interesting times. If Halcyon still has his job by this time tomorrow I will personally call for his head. We are too vital a force for good in this world to be lead by the bloody incompetent.”</p><p>A wave of raucous agreement buoyed the Commander. Meteor pounded a couple of short claps to add to it.</p><p>“Understand, Fourth, a change in leadership will not change our mission. We are clothed in the immense responsibility of combating the Maverick threat. In coming days our work will surely intensify. Let our focus be <em>as</em> intense. The enemy is not incompetence, nor managerial idiocy, nor even the colossal <em>bedamned</em> mistakes that have led us all here. The enemy is not politics! The enemy is MAVERICK!”</p><p>The floor shook from the unified shouts of agreement. Meteor almost felt frightened by seeing Turtle so riled. <em>But darn if she doesn’t have a reason…</em></p><p>“The enemy is those who would drag the battered soul of our world into the despair of endless conflict! Those who stand athwart the arc of history and bend it toward violence! The cacophony of terror drowning the harmony of civilization! And though it may not be our wish to carry this burden, it is our responsibility! To silence that noise, to keep history on the path toward peace—” Turtle’s voice broke— “and to heal our collective soul, that we might know peace when it comes… we will find every Maverick who threatens our world and <em>do what we have always done!</em>”</p><p>The lounge roared. Swept up in the moment, Meteor joined the chorus. Turtle roared louder.</p><p>“<em>When</em>, Fourth?!”</p><p>“<em>ANYTIME, ANYWHERE!</em>” The unit blared their slogan in different ways. Volt boomed it with the crowd. Nouveau shouted it in defiance of the world. Deco recited it with clarity of purpose. For Meteor, the important thing was that she said it with them.</p><p>“<em>WHEN, FOURTH?!</em>” Turtle repeated.</p><p>“<em>ANYTIME, ANYWHERE!</em>”</p><p>“<em>And when better?!”</em> Turtle smashed her glass on the floor. “Fourth Overland! Handle outstanding business and prepare yourselves! That blighted Maverick has surely shaken the jar, and you may well be needed! Make ready!”</p><p>#</p><p>The party dispersed. Skittle was among the first out; Meteor followed, or tried to, but the fairy flew at a good clip. She only caught up outside at the rim of the Courtyard.</p><p>“Hey,” she called.</p><p>“Shut up.”</p><p>“Not until you stop and talk.”</p><p>“About what,” they spun, “my bloody feelings? You can’t imagine what…” they started angry-weeping, “Jesus this isn’t going to end, ever, not ‘til we’re all dead. So much wasted life, here to go, not one of us is going to see what a natural reploid lifespan is…”</p><p>Meteor reached for them but they flew away.</p><p>“Don’t,” they ground their wrists in their eyes, “I don’t want a goddamn hug right now.”</p><p>“Then what do you want?”</p><p>“To shake Zero’s hand and then punch his nose in. S’complicated.” They sniffled. “You?”</p><p>Meteor threw her arms up and let them clank down against her sides. “Who knows. I thought things were getting <em>fixed</em>. The world was getting back to normal. <em>I</em> was getting back to normal. Now it’s, it’s like the world’s walking a plank over a sinkhole the size of a moon. But y’know, I refuse to stop until I see what’s on the other side. I’m going to get across. One sore centimeter at a time.”</p><p>Skittle said nothing. The quiet helped anchor Meteor in the moment. 4<sup>th</sup>’s component buildings and crossover skybridges blocked much of the Milky Way line, but the stars were still there, unbothered by the dramas of the earth. She envied them a little.</p><p>“Mimi! There you are.” Deco jogged over to her. “I was worried. Brother’s gone straight to work, Turtle’s taking a moment for herself, Volt’s taking a bunch of people to the Wall…”</p><p>“And you?” Meteor asked.</p><p>“Well, I thought you and Skittle might be upset…”</p><p>Skittle barked a few humorless laughs.</p><p>“… so I wanted to show you both something I do whenever I feel down. It won’t take long.”</p><p>“<em>Upset</em>,” Skittle laughed. “Feeling <em>down</em>,” they mocked. They flitted straight to Deco and jutted their chin like a street thug. “Where you are now you can’t even imagine where I am, princess.”</p><p>“My best friend all but died not long ago,” she reminded them. “Don’t think I’m a stranger to despair, Skittle. I know what can help.”</p><p>“Think of it this way,” Meteor appealed, “it can’t possibly make you feel worse.”</p><p>“<em>Pfeh</em>. Sure. Whatever. But if ponies or balloons are involved, I’m out.”</p><p>Deco led Meteor and Skittle back inside. She headed to the dorms.</p><p>“You taking us to bed or what?” Skittle snarked. Meteor scolded them with a flick upside their leaflike antennae.</p><p>“Sorry, I don’t like ‘em shorter than me,” Deco teased.</p><p>“Don’t encourage them,” Meteor teased her back, “they’ll stick their head on a ride armor. But seriously, where are we going?”</p><p>“Just over here.” She stopped at a door and showed it the back of her hand. The lock mechanism beeped and slid open… letting a breath of high-oxygen air out of a room full of plants. There were succulents, salvias, lilies, lilacs, and many other flowers and forms of greenery, frilly and smooth in pots and bowls from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Every shelf that wasn’t a grow-light was covered in them, making space only for the disaster-relief water tanks at the ends of each rack. It was vertical farming for one.</p><p>“This one’s been vacant since before you joined us, Mimi. I’ve just kinda made it mine.”</p><p>Meteor walked in, carefully so as not to accidentally bump or immolate anything. Skittle hovered around, looking unimpressed.</p><p>“Lemme guess,” they guessed, “you named ‘em all?”</p><p>“Well yes, that’s only polite, but I won’t bore you with the genealogy.” Deco took a watering can off a hook and tweaked a tank valve to fill it. “Can you guess why I come here?”</p><p>“Easy,” said Meteor. “The same reason anybody keeps plants: to have something to take care of.”</p><p>“It’s a little bit more than that.” She manually watered some pots. “I love these things. Cactus, vygies, stonecrops here, desert flowers over there, aquatics up here. And they aren’t cyber-plants, not even a little! Just old inefficient chloroplasts, fed on honest dirt and light and water, or sometimes no dirt at all. They’re more fragile than artificial. Slower to grow.”</p><p>“Weaker,” Skittle added. “Shorter-lived. Here to go.”</p><p>“Which is why they need me more.” Deco topped off a fishbowl that was a quarter full of rocks. The turbulence made a few marimos roll around the substrate. “It helps when hunting doesn’t go to plan. When my best isn’t enough, or when things are so far out of my hands I feel helpless.” She watered a spiky aloe and looked to Meteor. “Or those days when I’m keeping myself together just to see how things turn out.” She looked through a plant rack to spy Skittle. “Or when I can’t see hope in the future through the stacks of bodies in the way.”</p><p>Neither of them replied.</p><p>Deco watered some slightly shriveled marigolds in some slightly dusty dirt. “What we do is never more important than at the moment we do it. Nothing we do is ever wasted on the ones who have the most to gain from it.” The water seeped into the soil. “Even if these plants die, even if I die tomorrow, even if we <em>all</em> die tomorrow, I’m giving them love right now. It’s the most important thing I could do for them, and for me. No matter how the future turns out, it happens in a world where I did that.”</p><p>She tipped out the rest of the watering can and tapped some droplets on the petals of a tiger lily. “You shouldn’t focus on the future so hard, whether you see it as a place that can only be better or a place that can’t possibly be better. Otherwise you might not see it at all… and the things you love, the things you’re responsible for, will wither for lack of you.”</p><p>Deco, as touchy-feely demonstrative in her affections as ever, put down the can and took Meteor and Skittle by the hands.</p><p>“We couldn’t save everyone in the war. We can’t save everyone in whatever’s going to happen next. But even so… each of us holds a future for everyone else. Every life makes a future for every other life. And I refuse,” she squeezed their hands, “I absolutely <em>refuse</em> to let them fall into the dark.”</p><p>All Meteor could do was smile.</p><p>Skittle tugged their hand free. “Right. Then what’n the good hell am I flutterin’ about in a greenhouse for.”</p><p>Meteor watched them fly for the door. “Where are you going?”</p><p>“To prep the tools to make sure you last ‘til doomsday, fishflake. And don’t you think you’ll be rid of me ‘til <em>long</em> after that, like, I’m stickin’ around to <em>check!</em>” And out they went.</p><p>Deco still held Meteor’s hand. “My sentiments exactly.” She let it go. “Thanks for listening. I won’t keep you.”</p><p>“Deco,” Meteor smirked, “I spent hours watching you get repaired and I’m not sick of you yet.”</p><p>She giggled. “Well in <em>that</em> case, do you want to hear what I named my plants?”</p><p>“I would love to hear what you named your plants.”</p><p>Around name thirty, Meteor started to regret it.</p><p>“… And Blossom, of course, which meant I had to have a Bubbles and Buttercup, but I’d already named my third marimo Bubbles, so this one’s Dry Bubbles…”</p><p>Just a little.</p><p>#</p><p>The entire headquarters was abuzz that morning. Major Primus’s call to arms had indeed shaken the jar. Repliforce rallied to the Special Operations division under Major Quartus and struck dozens of targets worldwide. The forces brought to bear were terrifying in their ferocity and breadth, utterly shocking a world that had thought Repliforce had been reduced to a shadow of its former strength. How had they regrouped so fast? The reason was simple: the Mavericks had made their move.</p><p>Opportunistic to the last, the “Reploid Revolutionary Forces” – as they had always liked calling themselves – came out of the woodwork and openly supported all who flew the flag of Repliforce, the very army that had direly shrunk their numbers and driven them into hiding. The nightmares of the past and the insurgents of the present seemed to have put aside their differences and joined to launch a final war of independence.</p><p>Turtle had been deployed alone to supplement the Geneva 4<sup>th</sup> and 6<sup>th</sup> in a raging battle to defend Lisbon. Commander Raining Monarch had led the entirety of the local 1<sup>st</sup>, all twenty-six members who operated out of two floors of a tower on the Veracruz campus, to aid HQ4 in liberating Edmonton from the grasp of Spiral Pegasus. Commander Vent Plasmanta and Major Carburo Taladragon of the local 6<sup>th</sup>, meanwhile, had taken platoons of Larimars to quell a Maverick outbreak in San Francisco that had grown large enough to merit intervention by X himself. Even Chrono Sloth, Base Commander of HQ2, had taken the field. His Rank G might – and the threat of it – single-handedly halted the advance of one Captain Noventa and her husband Burn Dinorex outside Mexico City.</p><p>All of that had occurred in the first four hours.</p><p>It was telling – and frustrating – that only the very strongest officers in Veracruz had moved out. In a true all-out war, only a skeleton crew would have been left at the headquarters. Either the heavies of the Maverick Hunters already had the global outbreak well in hand, or the upper echelons were deliberately holding numbers back to defend against decapitation strikes. Though no one doubted the necessity of preparation – the opening hours of the Doppler War had been a lesson that none forgot – the handful of officers and hundreds of regulars of the Veracruz Fourth were left in a state of impatient tension. All awaited the call.</p><p>Meteor had been in a sim pod ever since leaving Deco and her plants. She finally stepped out and received a message from Turtle. It was good to hear her alive.</p><p>“Officers of the Fourth. The Oversight Council has officially returned us all to war footing. I am still afield. The ten-day service period is being recompiled. Once Captain Nouveau’s department is done, your rosters may feature additional targets or new priorities for current ones. Prepare accordingly. That is all.”</p><p>Meteor stepped aside to let a male-type Chrysoprase into the sim pod. Flurry busily managed the sims with a Howlite assistant; every pod was occupied, and a monitor indicated that every VR room was as well. Meteor left to make space.</p><p>The Hot Racks were loud with buster fire and the hissing whistles of rockets. Every single shooting lane was occupied. Volt was engaged with educating a crowd at the Round Rack, not sparring but demonstrating, not landing a single blow so as not to damage those who might be called out at any minute.</p><p>“Showa,” a familiar voice growled in her ear. She tapped her earcap.</p><p>“Focalizar? That you?”</p><p>“Cangrejo is dead.”</p><p>Meteor froze. Helar Cangrejo – an ice-type crab from the local 6<sup>th</sup>. She hadn’t known him well, but he and Laser Focalizar were good friends.</p><p>“When?” She asked, respectfully.</p><p>Focalizar was monotone from fresh grief. “Minutes ago. Slain by Sounding Humpback. I hope you’re proud of yourself.”</p><p>“Focalizar, I—”</p><p>“I don’t want to hear it. If you had discharged her when you worked here, he’d still be alive. I’ve pulled rank to put her on your roster, Showa. Don’t show your face to the Sixth again until you’ve taken responsibility. Out.”</p><p>Focalizar broke contact. Meteor closed her eyes.</p><p>She wondered about who else would fill her kill list when an odd tingling filled her head. Ambient sounds softened.</p><p>“Meteor Showa.” A voice seemed to reach her mind on a signal wavelength that bypassed her ears. “This is Valence Proteus. You are summoned to the command room. Arrive with haste.”</p><p>“Yes sir,” she said aloud. “May I ask why?”</p><p>“We have located Meganeural Spectrod.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:<br/>“Force Structure”</p><p>Though the Maverick Hunters use typical military structural designations, they organize themselves like no military, which is a point of pride for them.</p><p>--</p><p>REGULAR: A Hunter of no permanent leadership position. Regulars are recruited or built at Ranks C or D, but some can muster up to still greater strength and more reliable skill. Those that reach Rank B are always, sooner or later, tapped for Officer commissions.</p><p>OFFICER: A Hunter in a leadership position, always Combat Rank B or above. The vast majority are responsible for carrying out missions to retire Mavericks of Threat Class B or above, and for their missions, their rank entitles them to deployments of mechaniloid or reploid assistance. They may or may not lead administrative departments as well.</p><p>--</p><p>HUNTER: An individual member of the Maverick Hunters. Hunters are rarely deployed completely alone, but missions involving subterfuge or emergency response in mass outbreaks may require it. 99% of Hunters are reploids, up from 74% prior to the Day of Sigma.</p><p>SQUAD: A team of three to five Hunters. Hunters are trained such that, in theory, any can take up the role of squad leader, but typically a leader has seniority and/or the highest Combat Rank. Squads are often deployed to patrol areas, secure perimeters, augment national military operations upon request, or clear hostile areas after a resident Maverick has been retired. Squads of Regulars may also be called upon to retire Mavericks, usually of Class C or D.</p><p>PLATOON: Multiple Squads deployed on the same task within a mission. The component Squads number from two to ten, depending on the value, difficulty, and/or complexity of the task. In practice, specific tasks almost never require a ten-squad Platoon. If a Platoon leader is 1) needed, and 2) not the Officer in charge of the mission, the Officer chooses one from among Squad leaders.</p><p>COMPANY: A number of Hunters working under a single Officer on a mission. The maximum number of Hunters that any one Officer can have in a Company is fifty, although missions seldom require that much assistance. The size of an Officer’s Company therefore varies by mission, and may be as small as a single individual (usually a navigator). Companies technically dissolve after a mission is complete, but in practice many Officers have Hunters with whom they work again and again.</p><p>UNIT: A number of Hunters working with a unified command structure in one of eighteen tactical specializations (see “Unit Structure”) per Headquarters. Personnel numbers vary immensely between Units and even between the same Unit representation in different Headquarters. In some Headquarters, some Units may be composed of only a single Officer for purposes of coordination.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Mission 5: Meganeural Spectrod</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meteor is dispatched to Alice Springs, Australia to hunt the Maverick who all but killed her. Volt joins her on the complex approach.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Meteor hurried to the Command Room, trying not to think too far ahead. Nouveau awaited her. Proteus was there as well in holopresence, fuzzy at the edges, projected from no device Meteor could see. Turtle’s face and shoulders and the rim of her shell took up the back monitor. The globe map beaming from the center table focused on Australia.</p>
<p>“Reporting in,” said Meteor. “You need me?”</p>
<p>Proteus crossed his hands behind his big-sleeved lab coat. “Yes. With the assistance of the Australian government and our Darwin headquarters, along with classified data recovered from your late arm, we have successfully cornered Meganeural Spectrod.”</p>
<p>She put two and two together. “Cornered?”</p>
<p>“Correct,” Proteus nodded, dilating some of his many pupils. “Tokyo Sixteenth detected his arrival at a remote domain pylon in Alice Springs and – temporarily – cut the entire continent off from the Cyberspace network.”</p>
<p>“The problem is,” said Turtle, “he outfoxed us. He arrived with a Repliforce ground contingent which immediately reactivated the pylon in emergency mode, meaning he has a radius of five kilometers in which he can jump between real space and virtual.”</p>
<p>“On top of that,” Nouveau added, “Darwin was simultaneously attacked from the sea.”</p>
<p>“Humpback?”</p>
<p>“No, she’s contained in the Atlantic. Aggressors were some naval heavies, known escapees from Operation Rama, but definitely part of the invasion plan.” Nouveau manipulated the map projection, bringing up points of interest.</p>
<p>Turtle spoke over the images. “We believe Repliforce meant to wipe out Headquarters Six and establish Alice Springs as a rallying point and future base, possibly even the reploid homeland they’re so keen on making. Bringing Spectrod, however, turned out to be a liability. With the Cyberspace network cut off, most of his accompanying force was stranded near Mogadishu. Darwin came under attack simultaneously, part of a planned pincer attack, but without the second claw they were routed. The inland force didn’t assist at all – they fortified themselves.”</p>
<p>“Now they’re in a jar and waiting for backup,” said Nouveau.</p>
<p>“Will they get it?” Meteor asked.</p>
<p>“Possibly,” he frowned. “Between local Hunters and the Aussies, the Northern Approach is locked down, but the ADF is fending off probing attacks at Nullarbor and Eighty Mile Beach by themselves. It’s only a matter of time before one of those fronts cracks.”</p>
<p>Meteor studied the globe. “Have we tried bombarding the pylon?”</p>
<p>“Fifteenth is tasked to capacity worldwide,” said Turtle. “Darwin First Advance tried a closer strike but it ended in failure. Captain?”</p>
<p>Nouveau brought up satellite footage in insert graphics around the middle of Australia. Plumes of smoke featured heavily. “Spectrod is not happy about being contained. Evacuees report that he’s slaughtering and Soul-Formatting anyone he can while Repliforce guards the perimeter and hub. The Aussies are keeping outside forces from linking up, but even they estimate less than a day before one of them breaks through and hands him a ticket out.”</p>
<p>Meteor frowned. “Just a day…”</p>
<p>“Less than,” Nouveau repeated. “Trust me when I say that Repliforce is back in motion. Retire Meganeural Spectrod before he’s retrieved. That’s your primary objective, Lieutenant Showa. The mission’s your top priority now.”</p>
<p><em>What</em>.</p>
<p>“Are you freaking serious?!”</p>
<p>“We are indeed freaking serious,” Proteus dryly replied.</p>
<p>“But I’m the one he carved up!” She slapped her chest. “And what’s to stop him from formatting me again? And apart from that, isn’t he Class S?”</p>
<p>Turtle shook her head. “He’s Class S only in his ideal environmental context, much like how I’m only Rank S in the water. Remove the pylon from play and he’ll be at a disadvantage. To cover the gap, you’re cleared to take an officer along with you, and whatever mechaniloids can be spared. As for Soul Format…”</p>
<p>Proteus waved his hand and an internal schematic of Meteor appeared beside him.</p>
<p>“You were not told this because until now there wasn’t a need to know, but you and you alone carry a defensive measure. Your DNA has been… hardened. The best predictive modeling Sixteenth can produce says that Soul Format will have no effect on you. And Spectrod doesn’t know.”</p>
<p>“He’s still made of sword,” Meteor objected.</p>
<p>“Which is why you and your chosen partner are going in with a shield,” said Turtle. “Captain, if you would.”</p>
<p>Nouveau brought up a new figure in an inset square: a stout gray lizard in heavy green and yellow armor with enormous horizontal spikes on his squared shoulder pauldrons. Long red vertical fins on his back matched the tusk-like shield crystals on his chest, though Meteor couldn’t tell whether the wing-like fins were flightworthy.</p>
<p>“This is Iron Monitor, Darwin Eighth Armored Battalion,” said Nouveau. “Slated for transfer if this joint op goes well.”</p>
<p>“Transfer?”</p>
<p>Turtle looked preoccupied. “To the Fourth. Our Fourth. Absent Jaguar, we’re lacking a heavy-defense-support melee specialist, and absent your former armor, we could use a dedicated tank. Monitor here will be taking those roles, pending success.”</p>
<p>It made sense. Volt was sturdy, but in the manner of a wrecking ball. Turtle herself was at least as tanky as Meteor’s old specs, but she couldn’t be deployed for anything small.</p>
<p>“So you’re sending him to the tower while whoever-and-I take Spectrod?”</p>
<p>“The opposite, in fact,” said Nouveau. “Monitor knows how to draw a crowd and take a few hits. He’ll strike first and focus Spectrod’s attention, and ideally some of Repliforce’s too, while you break the pylon and anything in the way.”</p>
<p>“But what if Spectrod tries to format him?”</p>
<p>Proteus waved his hand again. Meteor’s schematic became a Cyberspace pylon with attendant data points. “We suspect that the Soul Format ability may be tied to Cyberspace. There was a pylon in Nassau that covered the operational area wherein you encountered him. Entirely divorced from a signal source, he may not be able to use it at all.”</p>
<p>“That’s a lot of qualifiers...”</p>
<p>“It is,” Turtle agreed. “But if his two worst tricks are removed from play, we’re confident that three seasoned Hunters with abundant support can retire him.”</p>
<p>“But until then, he could still format Monitor!”</p>
<p>“Then you’ll just have to act fast, won’t you?” Proteus somewhat callously noted.</p>
<p>Turtle cast his holo a nasty look before returning to Meteor. “You are not at liberty to refuse this mission, Lieutenant, there’s too much tied up in it. Once you are on-site, however, you will have some leeway as to the exact time and conditions of engagement.”</p>
<p>Meteor went quiet to process.</p>
<p>She didn’t want to die. More than that, she didn’t want a stranger to die for her, and she certainly didn’t want to put a friend in harm’s way. The part of her that enjoyed prep time, unsurprisingly, wanted more prep time.</p>
<p>And yet, despite everything, she was still herself. Spectrod couldn’t erase her experience. Plus, she had kitted out some new tricks he didn’t know about.</p>
<p>
  <em>Take out the fear of Soul Format and cheat-code cloaking and he’s just a flimsy cryptid going up against three Hunters. Probably.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I’ve pulled success out of worse conditions before.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>But I don’t want to die.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>But I can do this without dying.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>But I don’t want to watch somebody else die beside me.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>But I won’t, if I give it my all, which I freaking will.</em>
</p>
<p>She shook her head and steeled her resolve before she could second-guess herself again.</p>
<p>“Understood.”</p>
<p>“Good,” said Turtle. “Take it from here, gentlemen, I have a Portuguese admiral to coddle. And Meteor – good hunting.”</p>
<p>Turtle blipped out. Proteus’s hologram flicked its flagellum mustache.</p>
<p>“I will manage Cyberspace efforts remotely. Good hunting.” He evaporated.</p>
<p>Nouveau removed the globe’s insert screens and brought up a new one – a mugshot of a mostly-white crocodile reploid. “The ranking officer on-site is this gentleman,” he said, “Captain Grit Assaultie, Darwin Eighth. He and Iron Monitor can direct you once you arrive. Questions?”</p>
<p>“None.”</p>
<p>“Then all that remains is for you to pick a partner and a loadout.” Nouveau opened up a string of mugshots: himself, Deco, Skittle, and Volt. Assaultie’s mugshot flipped front to back and became a live shot of Windsor the quartermaster.</p>
<p>“Requisitions here,” said Windsor. “I’ve been briefed enough – you won’t be avoiding me this time!”</p>
<p>“Hey,” Meteor teased, “you should be glad I never get your toys dented.”</p>
<p>“Yes, well, nothing’s getting out of this one undented. What’ll it be?”</p>
<p>At least picking mechaniloids was easier than officers. “What did the Darwin team bring?”</p>
<p>“The fast half of their Eighth to break Repliforce’s perimeter. Victoroids, ride armors, a garage of ride chasers and plenty of squads to ride them.”</p>
<p>“Not a lot of air cover then?”</p>
<p>“No,” said Nouveau. “The Darwin First fielded two accomplished officers with flight systems. Spectrod shredded them both.”</p>
<p>“Noted,” Meteor regretted asking. Still, the tactical wheels in her head started spinning. “How many Hotarions do we have?”</p>
<p>“Racks of hundreds,” said Windsor. “Old models, though. You, ah, never decommissioned them.”</p>
<p><em>Because I knew how to use them,</em> Meteor smirked to herself.</p>
<p>“Send as many as my current rank allows.”</p>
<p>“Are you sure, ma’am? Going by the Maverick’s dossier…”</p>
<p>“They’re not for Spectrod. Trust me.”</p>
<p>“Copy. I’ll get Deploy right on it. Good hunting.” Windsor blipped out, leaving Meteor with her choice of friends.</p>
<p>“Who do you recommend?” She asked Nouveau, eyeing his mugshot. It managed to be both imperious and glamorous at the same time.</p>
<p>“The one whom you think will get the job done. They’ll be part of your company for the duration of the mission, so choose carefully.” He gave her a dirty side-eye, “And if you pick my sister, you’d better bring her back alive. That’s all I’ll say about that.”</p>
<p>“Yes sir.”</p>
<p>She looked over the profiles – four of her best friends.</p>
<p>
  <em>Deco. Rank B. Versatile generalist. Platonic Suite light ceratanium fabricator, rapid-fire buster, good solid dash system and a pair of useful Maverick weapons. She’s always helpful, but against an S…?</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Nouveau. Rank A. Ranged specialist. R-IV Endell gravitic system lets him fly, crush and fling hostiles, divert projectiles, and turn his own Platonic Arrow ceratanium chevrons ultra-high-mass. Rapid-fire buster, no dash – no need – and his VWES…</em>
</p>
<p>“Oh, you upgraded to a Vee-Wess Four?”</p>
<p>“While you were recovering, actually. I talked myself into buying one with the Captain promotion.”</p>
<p>“What’s in it?”</p>
<p>“Plasma cannonballs, an anti-ordinance energy shield, hydrofluoric acid injector darts, and payloads of an awful lot of molecularly-sharp caltrops fired at speed.”</p>
<p>“No saber yet?”</p>
<p>“If I’m that close to a Maverick then I’ve made a tactical error,” his expression soured.</p>
<p>
  <em>And Spectrod loves melee. Hmm.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Skittle – Scatter Seelie. Photonic specialist. Rank A on paper, but bypass their shields and they’ll be pinned to a board. Prismatic Lens, Dazzle Diffractor… wait, since when was their beam stinger named Chancellor Stabby? Nevermind. Low-velocity flight, no VWES – they always took passive upgrades, so many that their damage is huge. But could they beat Spectrod on a quickdraw…?</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Volt Batteram. Rank A. Electric-type melee specialist. Solid as they come, and don’t I know it. Looks like he picked up a couple tricks since Lamassu, but his core system still juices them, and his two Maverick weapons really play to his strengths…</em>
</p>
<p>“I’m taking Volt,” Meteor decided. “He’s great in a stand-up fight.”</p>
<p>“Yes, we’ve all seen the crowd videos,” Nouveau cracked a slightly relieved smile.</p>
<p>Meteor shaded her forehead. “Who posted it?”</p>
<p>“Six different spectators, and at last check seventy thousand Bustr users. You represented us well. Please continue that.”</p>
<p>“Yes sir.”</p>
<p>“No sense dawdling,” Nouveau concluded. “I’ll call him in.”</p>
<p>Volt arrived inside of ten minutes. Most of that was a top-off of his health, WEAPON system, and VWES energies.</p>
<p>“Here,” he announced on his way in. “Situation?”</p>
<p>Nouveau gave him a brief briefing, including Soul Format and Meteor’s defense against it. Ever professional, Volt acknowledged with nods and monosyllabic replies.</p>
<p>“Questions?” Nouveau prompted.</p>
<p>“One.” He glanced at Meteor. “Why me?”</p>
<p>Meteor counted on her fingers, ticking in her thumb first, “Because there’s no escaping his melee, you’re the best brawler I know, we’ve tangled with an S before, you <em>might</em> be his weakness given the way I saw him flash when I beam-zapped him back in Nassau, and most importantly,” she pointed at him with her pinky finger, “I trust you.”</p>
<p>He blinked. His serious expression lightened.</p>
<p>“Thanks. Ready?”</p>
<p>“Wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”</p>
<p>“Good.”</p>
<p>Windsor blinked back into a rectangle below Australia.</p>
<p>“Windsor here. Thirty mark-one Hotarions on-route to the operation site.”</p>
<p>Volt gave Meteor a questioning look.</p>
<p>“Screening,” she answered. “Spectrod won’t fall to them, he’ll fall to <em>us</em>.”</p>
<p>Volt smirked.</p>
<p>“Then all is prepared,” said Nouveau. “Spare no quarter, Lieutenants. Good hunting.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>It was dawn in Australia. Meteor and Volt beamed down at the Alice Springs Golf Club, a golf course and hotel complex partially converted into a base camp. Meteor saw at least twenty Hunter regulars without even turning her head, all of them armed and prepping, clearly on-edge.</p>
<p>“Y’from Veracruz, roit?” A green Chrysoprase officer strode over to her and Volt. “Name’s Irwin. Roit this way.”</p>
<p>“Looks busy,” she noted as she followed. A pair of Raiden ride armors tromped across a sand trap.</p>
<p>“Coupla scouts just bought it at the convention center. That was our confirmation Spectrod’s still payin’ us close watch. We’re all ready for some payback, if y’catch me drift.”</p>
<p>“I do. Boy do I.”</p>
<p>“How many left?” Asked Volt.</p>
<p>“My kind?” Irwin scowled. “Fitty outta sevenny.”</p>
<p>They passed an equipment beam-in pad, larger and squarer than the ones for people. More Chrysoprases unloaded the racks of Meteor’s Hotarions from a big wheeled crate that had been moved off the pad. Each of the old-fashioned mechaniloids was a firefly-shaped missile or possibly a missile-shaped firefly, a full meter long. Each one hovered in place as it turned on.</p>
<p>“There’s your package,” said Irwin.</p>
<p>“It’s actually for you,” said Meteor. “Little bit of high-velocity help.”</p>
<p>“Well ain’t you considerate,” Irwin grinned.</p>
<p>He guided them to a mobile command center, a ring of monitors and tall terminals that was set up right on a putting green. Grit Assaultie, fourteen feet high, was almost too big for it. The tip of his tail brushed a terminal while the tip of his jaws hung under a monitor. With him was the mission’s “shield,” the green-armored Iron Monitor, standing outside the ring.</p>
<p>“Retirers are here,” the escort stated before walking off, shocking Meteor with his casualness.</p>
<p>The white crocodile lifted his head. “G’day,” he greeted, “call me Saltie. Showa, heard of you, good t’see you’re not some anime mermaid. And your second?”</p>
<p>“Volt Batteram,” he saluted.</p>
<p>“Put that hand down, son, you’ll wear it out.” Saltie flapped a claw at the lizardtank, “This stiff bastard here’ll be your new pal in sunny Meh-hee-ko if he doesn’t frag it out there.”</p>
<p>“Iron Monitor,” Monitor nodded, ponderously. His neck and shoulders were thickly armored, contouring his pauldrons right up to his helmet. His helmet was full-coverage, the neck plates in front connecting underneath an aesthetic dragon-like beak to hide his entire face, save for his solid red eyes. “Don’t mind Saltie, he’s just speaking Australian. He and I go way back.”</p>
<p>“And it’s about time the little guy’ll have a couple mates his size.” Saltie amicably pounded Monitor’s shoulder; the lizard was half his height yet eye to eye with Volt. “You two been briefed, then?”</p>
<p>“Broadly,” Meteor confirmed.</p>
<p>“Then here’s the skinny. Don’t know if you know this, but we’re a pearl of somewhere in a great big oyster of nowhere. The Mavs won’t have a lot of inland resistance if and when they break through.”</p>
<p>“Mavs?” Meteor asked. “Are they the majority force there?”</p>
<p>Saltie sigh-growled. “Too right. It’s honestly taking the whole of the Australian Defense Force to hold them off on both fronts. We got eight to ten hours, then not only will your ghost bug get away, but we’ll have a nice Maverick-Repliforce foothold kicked in our—” he caught himself with a quick pause— “belly.”</p>
<p>“And with all the territory they’ll need to grow,” Monitor added. “Repliforce needs defensible and empty territory, and we’ve got the most.”</p>
<p>The gravity of it all finally hit Meteor. She had given them a serious stall by letting the Hunters know about Spectrod in the first place. They couldn’t have slammed the door behind him without her, couldn’t have changed his plans without her. In another world, she supposed, the manicured artificial grass she stood upon might have been where Repliforce regrouped to stay forever.</p>
<p>
  <em>But not this world. That’ll have to be enough for now.</em>
</p>
<p>“What’s their strength?” Volt asked.</p>
<p>“Middling numbers but heavily armed,” said Saltie. “I’ll start with where we aren’t, which is where you’re headed.”</p>
<p>The crocodile cued up his monitors. The largest two angled in and beamed a rectangular holoscreen that closed the gap of the ring. It bore a live satellite image of the pylon, a lighthouse at the edge of a lake of solar panels. The source of the local Cyberspace connection was as tall as a radio tower, but freestanding under sweeping inward-arch geometry.</p>
<p>“The Cyberspace domain pylon is located down here, right between the Arid Zone Research Institute and the Yirara Solar Plant.” The view zoomed out a little to indicate where they were in relation to it: the forward camp was just over five kilometers to its north-northeast, on the other side of a hill ridge.</p>
<p>“How do we shut it down?” Meteor asked.</p>
<p>“Break it,” said Volt.</p>
<p>“Well yes, but what’s the fastest way?”</p>
<p>“Easy enough.” Saltie brought up a schematic. “It’s just one big room wide, see? Trash the power conduits three floors up and the emergency broadcast mode will click off.”</p>
<p>“Or,” Monitor pointed out, “you could topple the whole thing. The three supports around the base look load-bearing.”</p>
<p>Saltie scratched his chin. He had to reach. “Might take longer, and your ass’ll be hanging out, but it’s an option.”</p>
<p>Monitor looked Meteor over. “Your special is thermite, isn’t it? They won’t last long against something that hot.”</p>
<p>He winked. The eye turned toward only her went dark and then light again. Meteor stared at him longer than she should have.</p>
<p>“Defenses?” Volt mercifully took the attention off her.</p>
<p>“A knot of Knots is busy keeping it running,” said Saltie, “but there’s not much seriously guarding it besides artillery-deniers and anti-air. Couple speedy Vic-Pinks, that’s all. Repliforce spent their heaviest units establishing a perimeter. Evacuees – survivors – from Yirara College reported your dragonfly was making sport of them while his buddies watched.”</p>
<p>Meteor tightened her lips. <em>He’ll pay for that.</em></p>
<p>“Entry vectors?”</p>
<p>“Couple. Going clockwise, starting at twelve…”</p>
<p>The screen moved north, up to a gap in the mountain ridge.</p>
<p>“We currently have Repliforce blocked off at the Gap – this bit here, where the rails and highway pass over the Todd River. ‘Course this time of year it’s dry. A full third of the bastards are right there, and it’s right at the rim of Spectrod’s effective cyberjump range. We push in too far and he’ll blink in and out, hitting our backs at random intervals.” Saltie gestured to Monitor, who silently nodded. “Monitor’s going to lead his charge there to keep the bug’s attention. You’re welcome to go in at his side and try to punch through, but if Spectrod gets half an eye on you, Showa, he’ll likely break straight for you. He’ll be fighting at his level best. With a big bunch of backup.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Nooooo thanks.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Then again, I’d have not one but two skilled Hunters and the mass of regulars as backup… but then again again, I’d be putting them at serious risk.</em>
</p>
<p>“Where will you be?” She asked Saltie.</p>
<p>“Coordinating. If you lot fail, I’ll have to organize funneling the last residents up the highway while protecting the camp’s pads <em>and</em> keeping Repliforce jarred. I’ll be the last man out. My special can scrape the smug off Halcyon, but if this push frags us, no way can we hold here against what’s coming. But I ramble.”</p>
<p>The screen view moved clockwise to the east. “Next path in is here. Ross Highway’s empty and the river’s in no danger of having water in it. You and your partner could take a couple chasers, ride out to Emily Gap, take the highway to the river, cross it, then zip through the solar plant.”</p>
<p>“With no cover,” said Monitor.</p>
<p>“The panels offer a little, but on the way you’ve got not a whit. Once some random Knot spots you, you’ll have Spectrod on your case in a hurry – so at best, you’re lookin’ at trying to fight him and crack the pylon at the same time, with just two people.”</p>
<p>Meteor nodded. <em>Another serious risk, but a different flavor.</em></p>
<p>The satellite camera moved east-southeast and paused over a suburban area split by the ephemeral river. “Or if you like, you could try here,” said Saltie. “Ross Highway again, but you turn south through Amoonguna, which <em>isn’t</em> in the bug’s range, then west through Connellan, which <em>is</em>.”</p>
<p>“Much presence in Connellan?” Volt asked.</p>
<p>“Not yet. The main wrinkle is this…” The satellite continued clockwise until it stopped over the Alice Springs Airport, several diagonal airstrips slashing the desert. “A bunch of ‘em are on the airport, sending out flocks of Tubamail-Ess-Fours to screen the outback from there to Route Eighty-Three. A few of the birds are sticking around, though. Take that route and they’re sure to see you and say hello with a big whack of Repliforce.”</p>
<p>Meteor was confident she could handle such a whack, but… “Would Spectrod break off to join them?”</p>
<p>“From what we’ve seen?” Monitor tilted his head. “Not immediately. He picks off targets of opportunity, and if the airport squads move on you, he’ll probably be content to let them.”</p>
<p>Volt pointed to the left of the airport. “Are those strips to the west part of it?”</p>
<p>“No,” Saltie moved the camera, “that’s the dragway and desert racetrack. Repliforce is also sitting pretty there, which cuts us off from Highway Eighty-Seven and all points south. Heavy vehicle assets will come straight up that way when the airport birds see you.” He closed the screen. “And that’s it.”</p>
<p>“That’s all?” Meteor blinked hard.</p>
<p>“All that’s advisable.” He re-opened the view to show a mighty castle-like wall of familiar wood. “Couple hours ago they set up a huge barricade at the Bullen Road gap – mostly cyberwood, swarming with Tentoroids now. If you were to strike there, you’d only give Spectrod more prep time and a chance to rally the southern forces. That’s suicide and I’m not signing off on it.”</p>
<p>Meteor couldn’t help but agree.</p>
<p>“Last point of order. Your fireflies.”</p>
<p>“All for Monitor.” She looked to him. “Hotarions are high-velocity hit-and-runners. In a group there’s no better mechaniloid for a screening barrage, not even Tubamails.”</p>
<p>“But they’re Mark-Ones,” Monitor tilted his head. “Mark-Twos are better. Smaller, tighter turning radius, projectile capability, better swarming algorithm. And Mark-Threes punch even harder with their onboard weapons.”</p>
<p>Meteor’s professional expertise rose to counter. “Oh, sure, if you’re made of zenny. And fighting indoors. We’re not only making optimum use of existing resources, we’re working with huge horizontal areas the likes of which Mark-Ones are better suited to cover with their larger size and thrust, and the threat of higher damage will make <em>some</em> of the perimeter forces show you their backs instead of just standing there and getting sideswiped over and over. Time the deployment right and the wave itself will shape the engagement in your favor. Repeating high-speed waves like Mark-Ones give will stress an enemy perimeter a lot more efficiently.”</p>
<p>Saltie and Monitor tilted their chins up.</p>
<p>“Point taken,” Monitor replied, a smirk in his voice. “You know your stuff.”</p>
<p>“Darn right,” Meteor nodded pridefully. “Take them all when you go in.”</p>
<p>“So,” Saltie pointed his face at her, “how’re <em>you</em> goin’ in?”</p>
<p><em>Well, Lieutenant?</em> Meteor asked herself. <em>You feeling smart or dumb today?</em></p>
<p>
  <em>I’m feeling like I should be more scared than I am.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>You aren’t, because these are good options and you know what you’re doing.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Good point, me.</em>
</p>
<p>She wasn’t afraid of Repliforce regulars. If plowing through a couple dozen was what it took to nail down the ghost-fly, she’d take it.</p>
<p>“Volt, I’m thinking the suburbs. You?”</p>
<p>“Sounds good,” he shrugged a little. Not the reaction she expected for a dangerous op.</p>
<p>“This isn’t the time to just roll with things, Volt. If you have an opinion, please speak up, I’d like to hear it.”</p>
<p>“My opinion? You know what you’re doing. It’s a good call. I’d grumble if we were going across the river. Crossing into a thicket of enemies suits me just fine.”</p>
<p>“Glad to hear it,” Saltie grinned a very long grin. “The chasers are set up by the hotel over thataway. Just pick your favorite and ping me when you’re through Emily Gap. That’s when we’ll move in.”</p>
<p>“When I will, you mean,” Monitor ribbed him.</p>
<p>“You know damn well what I meant, y’ coat rack.” Saltie leaned Meteor’s way with a stage whisper, uselessly covering a fraction of his jaw with the back of his hand. “Good luck dealing with this joker in Fourth, don’t let him use the good silver.”</p>
<p>“It’ll be tough, sir,” said Meteor, “half our couches aren’t for sitting.”</p>
<p>Saltie barked a few laughs and slapped her on the back. “You’re all right, bluey. Good hunting.”</p>
<p>“See you on the other side, Lieutenant,” said Monitor, watching her go.</p>
<p>She and Volt headed to the hotel on foot.</p>
<p>“Bluey?” Volt chuckled, once the reptiles were out of earshot. “I’m the blue one.”</p>
<p>“It’s Australian slang for any reploid the least bit red. Dunno how or when it got started.”</p>
<p>“Mm. Gonna have to call Fram that.”</p>
<p>“Don’t you dare,” Meteor laughed, “she’ll knock your horns off.”</p>
<p>“Whatever you say, Bluey.”</p>
<p>She put up her dukes and slugged him a friend-tap on the arm.</p>
<p>Some expensive cars had been moved off the hotel parking lot to make room for a fleet of ride chasers. Meteor immediately rushed over and start petting an Adion’s pointed hood.</p>
<p>“Ooooh <em>hoo-hoo</em>, Model Eff-Six, top of the line. I like Darwin’s req department already.”</p>
<p>“Don’t drool, you’ll decommission it.” Volt mounted the one next to it, evidently not caring that an F3 was much less classy.</p>
<p>The two of them sped to the highway out of town. The ruggedness of the Outback stretched forever, largely unchanged from the environmental abuses of the last century. Only the glitter of different models of solar power plants near and far gave any outward indication of what year it was. Alice Springs had never been huge, but it was still home to tens of thousands. Meteor aimed to keep it that way.</p>
<p>The ridgeline that divided the city followed them until they turned. Meteor had no idea who Emily was, but her eponymous Gap came up ahead.</p>
<p>“Showa here,” she commed, “nearing the Gap.”</p>
<p>“Roger,” Saltie immediately replied. “Hands off the breaks and give ‘em hell.”</p>
<p>“Copy that.” She leaned forward and gunned the quiet, fusion-energy motor. Volt kept up as she passed through the commencement of hostilities.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor couldn’t see the action, but she trusted it was there. She and Volt demolished the speed limit through sleepy Amoonguna, dodging the odd wrecks of overturned and buster-blasted cars. Repliforce had swept through and left, no better than a common gang. The thought of it boiled her.</p>
<p>In the privacy of Meteor’s head she spared some space to hate Repliforce for falling so far in the world. They weren’t always insurrectionists, weren’t always terrorists. In the foolish early days, she, like most Hunters, held only as much rivalry for them as firefighters held for police. They did good work; the Hunters alone could never have driven the Mavericks so far back so quickly. A standing anti-Maverick army had been a great idea on paper. Now that paper was well and truly burned, and the burden went straight back to Meteor and the institution she cared about.</p>
<p>She wondered whether Volt was thinking the same thing. He did insightfully complain about the Hunters taking on too many tasks. What shape would the institution take on as the pressure turned geologic? She just hoped she could keep adapting…</p>
<p>Volt’s voice in her earcap derailed her train of thought. “Meteor. Above.”</p>
<p>Jet-powered swallows were keeping pace with her high above. Tubamails – which always grated on Meteor for the poor pun on <em>tsubame</em> and <em>assail</em>. She glanced back down and throttled up on the thrust to make a right turn. They followed.</p>
<p>“Heck. We’re made.”</p>
<p>“Patrols, not screeners,” Volt commed. “Keeping eyes on where they’ve been.”</p>
<p>Meteor poured on the speed again. “How can you tell?”</p>
<p>“They’re not divebombing.”</p>
<p>“Fair enough.”</p>
<p>Up ahead stretched a low causeway. The riverbed it crossed over was so dry that scrub trees grew in it.</p>
<p>“Bridge,” Volt noted. “Take it?”</p>
<p>“Take it. Match my right, then full ahead.”</p>
<p>“Mm.”</p>
<p>They matched velocities, side by side, and sped onto the causeway. Spiky green lumps emerged in the riverbed in Meteor’s peripheral vision.</p>
<p>
  <em>Good thing we mis—</em>
</p>
<p>The bridge heaved under her.</p>
<p>Both she and Volt swerved and spun out away from each other, leaning away from the skid to keep from rolling. They stopped on opposite sides of the road ahead of the bridge, looked back… and saw a Worm Seeker sinking its arching body back into the earth.</p>
<p>“Keep moving!” She shouted.</p>
<p>There was no way it could keep up with ride chasers.</p>
<p>It didn’t need to, as a second one erupted out of the earth in front of her.</p>
<p>She pulled back and fired the chaser’s dash, igniting the beam blade mounted under the hood. She slammed into the ugly thing’s face and carved a groove even as it kept rising. She rode halfway down its segmented back before she swerved and jumped the bike off the side, evading the whipback of its spiked pinchy tail. Her classy and expensive ride threw sparks from its undercarriage as she landed heavily yet safe.</p>
<p>“Show-off,” Volt audibly grinned.</p>
<p>“Even on accident!”</p>
<p>The Worm Seeker turned and spat its bouncy bombs, but Meteor and Volt were already long out of range.</p>
<p>They passed into Connellan, the road cutting through more houses than businesses. It was literally a war zone of broken walls. Some were still burning. Any mirth they had left evaporated. Meteor dodged debris; Volt jumped a broken car.</p>
<p>And then over the hums of their engines Meteor heard an entirely different set of engines. Heavy ones. They faded in rather than barreling in, which suggested they were mostly parallel to her immediate road.</p>
<p>“Giga Deaths inbound,” she advised.</p>
<p>“Engagement?”</p>
<p>“Get close and hit hard, I’ll cover you!”</p>
<p>“Copy.”</p>
<p>A tense few seconds passed before she caught a glimpse of them.</p>
<p>She passed a perpendicular road. Three… <em>bumpy</em>-looking Giga Death Rs crossed it outpacing her, continuously hoverdashing through the wreckage of a neighborhood. They weren’t using a road at all – and with that snatch of visual she could tell they were not only ahead of her but turning.</p>
<p>“Incoming!”</p>
<p>A screening barrage of missiles made a path through the remains of a neighborhood. Some of the shots made it through to the other side, but both Hunters were ready for them. The luckiest missiles on the best trajectory went down with Meteor’s buster blast and Volt’s evasion.</p>
<p>All three Giga Deaths – Meteor quickly named them A, B, and C – smashed through a house and spread over the road. They were each covered in five tenaciously clinging Mettaurs – <em>sacrificial armor, clever</em> – and hover-dashing backwards, not just from boot thrusters but their own cannon arms pivoted 180 degrees. That still left them with their frontal cannons to fire.</p>
<p>Meteor throttled down and tried to turn, but the leftmost Giga Death pivoted to keep her on the road. The mechaniloids formed a mobile cordon of high-speed positioning and filled the space with missile fire.</p>
<p>Meteor jumped a crossfire; Volt weaved around the projectiles and pushed in. He lifted his arm, formed his buster and fired multiple yellow-hot spinning blades shaped like right angles, puncturing and slashing off three sacrificial Mets and opening up more armor to hit. Meteor meanwhile spat a Melter rocket at A which struck dead center and splashed two Mets clean off. B and C pivoted to aim at Volt – Meteor calculated fast, selected Arbor Wall and fired to intercept.</p>
<p>The hard football of a seed hit B’s missile and sprang out a mass of roots that hit the ground and pinwheeled away past Meteor. Volt swerved and let the remaining missile miss him.</p>
<p>The ride-along Mettaurs rose and took their revenge. The barrage was intense yet over in a blink; there was simply no way either Hunter could dodge the hail of ten tiny crossfire shots. They both took a pair of plasma shots, and so did their rides.</p>
<p>Sparks began dancing over Volt’s yellow horns as he keyed in something on his Adion’s console.</p>
<p>“Meteor. Guard my ride.”</p>
<p>“Copy!”</p>
<p>The white elements of Volt’s armor glowed to shocking yellow. Wreathed in sparks and arcs, he leapt off his ride and slammed his hooves into C’s forehead. Lightning cascaded over its hull and a spherical burst emanated from Volt’s horns; the mechaniloid’s arms flailed and it spun out, shedding stunned Mettaurs. He leapt from C to B, C exploded against a building, Volt landed and started pounding B’s head in – as A aimed at his unmanned, slightly lagging ride chaser.</p>
<p>Meteor caught the missile with a Melter rocket just as it left A’s muzzle, setting it off early and splashing burning flecks over its remaining riders. She swung closer, opened her mouth and covered the Giga Death’s eyes in thermite. It began exploding and falling behind her pace; B flew past in the same way. Volt jumped off it and landed on his wobbling, veering-off Adion with the precision of a mountain goat.</p>
<p>Meteor tossed him a thumbs-up. “Show-off.”</p>
<p>“More coming,” he pointed.</p>
<p>The south was moving. Plumes of desert dust rose behind the silhouettes of three Raiden ride armors and some smaller unclear enemy shapes riding on a pair of larger square objects.</p>
<p>Meteor squinted. “Troop trucks?”</p>
<p>“Repliforce Army models,” Volt grunted. “Metal Rheas.”</p>
<p>“Crap.”</p>
<p>Meteor began plotting her next move when spiky green lumps burrowed out of the road.</p>
<p>“<em>Road!</em>” She shouted, too late.</p>
<p>They hit the anti-vehicle trap head-on. The thick spikes of some thirty Atareeters, too many too fast to count, ablated the bottoms of their ride chasers. They tried to avoid, but they were going too fast and the trap was too thick. Meteor and Volt jumped just as their tickets in exploded.</p>
<p>They stuck the landing and ran to a stop inside the Yirara Solar Plant, a rather old-fashioned installation that was nothing more than a sea of photovoltaic panels angled toward the sun.</p>
<p>The swarm of Atareeters dug back into the earth, their work done.</p>
<p>Meteor assessed. The heavy force was bound to catch them. The pylon stood at the other end of the solar arrays, some two kilometers out. The dust cloud drew closer.</p>
<p>Worst of all, they were well inside Spectrod’s effective range.</p>
<p>“Thoughts?” Volt asked, lightly enough to count as dry humor.</p>
<p>Meteor turned and started dashing. “Objective. Always objective.”</p>
<p>Volt kept up with her in long springy strides with the power and poise of a dancer. “They’ll catch up.”</p>
<p>“We’ll jump that bridge when we come to it!”</p>
<p>The missiles jumped them first. The enormous sight line on their arching approach would have made them easy to shoot down if they were aiming for the Hunters. Instead they rained far at their backs, blazing a trail for the vehicle assets.</p>
<p>And a firing lane as well.</p>
<p>Neither Meteor nor Volt were prepared for the first hits out of the smoke, but one missile flashing each of them was all it took for them to break off left and weave through the shiny solar panels. They made it into the light cover without another scratch and kept running. Probing missiles landed at random locations near them, smashing the past-century panels.</p>
<p>“Strat?” Volt asked.</p>
<p>“Trucks are mine, Raidens yours, but don’t burn too much of your special. Zero-five timer, hard for slow or cripple, then break.”</p>
<p>“Copy. On your go.”</p>
<p>“<em>Go</em>.”</p>
<p>They turned on a dime and swept back to their pursuers. A five-second timer started in Meteor’s head.</p>
<p>[0:05]</p>
<p>She readied Arbor Wall and brought out her Gaia Sword as the right Rhea crashed through the solar array. The rectangular assault vehicle looked nothing like a bird, but rather a flat-topped tank. It carried two Victoroid Custom R-series on its back, <em>Because of course it freaking would,</em> Meteor inwardly groaned.</p>
<p>Volt opened on the middle Raiden by firing a pair of spinning five-strand bolo-type devices at the legs, switched up and shot another red right-angle blade at shoulder height.</p>
<p>[0:04]</p>
<p>Meteor lead the way with a Melter rocket, dashjumped behind it and lobbed an Arbor seed. Three collisions happened in a row: the rocket to the front Vic-Pink, the insta-burn of the constricting roots touching thermite, and Meteor herself, landing atop the Rhea and its front Victoroid saber-first.</p>
<p>The spinning counterweights of Volt’s <em>Cable Web</em> VWES weapon wrapped his target’s legs tight while the <em>Bright Fang</em> unreturnable boomerang stuck in its shoulder, throwing it off-balance and toppling it to the dirt. Volt moved in.</p>
<p>[0:03]</p>
<p>Meteor’s pile of abuse ended the front Victoroid. The blade of her Gaia Sword flashed into a stake with which she speared the one behind it, but she only caught it at an angle across its chest. It brought up its cannon arm and blasted nearly point-blank, flashing Meteor’s shields even as it caught an Arbor Wall seed to the face. The roots snaked over its body and constricted hard enough to squeal the metal. Meteor shoved her foe off the side of the Rhea, leaving her to be pincered by two incoming missiles from the Rhea itself. Meteor pulled off a combat roll that cleared the missiles, but their sandwiching blast radius sent her off the back of the vehicle.</p>
<p>Volt meanwhile leapt for the left Raiden. The pilot swung his ride armor’s fist too early and Volt responded with a backwards somersault kick, trailing a crescent of bright white electricity as his armor trim yellowed again. The impact snapped the Raiden’s arm and stunned the pilot with an electric surge, which was just the start of that particular Standard Beret’s troubles. Volt completed the somersault, landed in the seat, and summarily punched the pilot’s nose into his neck.</p>
<p>[0:02]</p>
<p>Meteor landed, seeded the Rhea’s side treads in two places and dashed off to the other Rhea before they even finished growing. Both Vic-Pinks riding atop the second tank lobbed bombs from their notoriously strong face-mounted launchers. Four homing missiles from their mount were already inbound.</p>
<p>The right Raiden swung up to Volt as he abandoned the left one. Volt fired a Cable Web, but it only tied the incoming arm to itself. He dodged the ride armor’s fist saber and moved in.</p>
<p>[0:01]</p>
<p>There was no dodging the acre of ordinance coming to eat Meteor’s face, but she was quick enough to choose her pain. She took one homing missile to the chest to deliberately fire her shields and let them soak the rest of the damage. Two Arbor Wall seeds arrested the treads facing her.</p>
<p>Volt flashed a stun aura from his horns, halting the Raiden in its tracks, and opened up a brutal combo to the ride armor’s waist.</p>
<p>[0:00]</p>
<p>“<em>Break!</em>”</p>
<p>Volt finished with a killer straight punch and the Raiden started exploding. He leapt after Meteor as she left the broken and the dead behind. The Rheas were stuck in place and fired more missiles, but they were designed for punch, not range. The solar panels shielded the Hunters from the rain until they were clear.</p>
<p>“Showa!” Saltie yelled in Meteor’s ear. “Position?!”</p>
<p>“On route! One click!”</p>
<p>“<em>He blinked! He’s on to you!</em>”</p>
<p>She dashed. She ran. One kilometer to go. Less than one. The pylon loomed.</p>
<p>If Meteor had a heart, it would have been hammering.</p>
<p>“I can get there faster,” said Volt, his tone hard and determined. “I can burn some battery, run in, start hitting it before you.”</p>
<p>Meteor hesitated as she dashed. And dashed again.</p>
<p>“Yes? No?”</p>
<p><em>He’ll be fine</em>, she told herself. <em>He’ll be fine</em>.</p>
<p>“Go, Volt. I’ll be right behind you.”</p>
<p>“I know.”</p>
<p>His bounding strides started to shed sparks. His white turned yellow and he ran like the wind, out of sight between the solar panels.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>He had an objective. A task to be done. No rest could be allowed. The fool Repliforcers between him and it were in for a bad time.</p>
<p>Volt Batteram charged like a train, his body surging with the time-limited force of his all-in-one electric-element power booster, <em>Assault Battery</em>.</p>
<p>The Aussiegator said there would only be a few Knots. He didn’t mention the row of Death Guardians, the jumped-up Beam Cannon guys with the oversized shields they swung around.</p>
<p>
  <em>No sweat.</em>
</p>
<p>Bright Fangs carved right into the hovering barricade, cleaving through two neighbors. Volt shot the gap, jumped through the door and landed sparking. His new(ish) Thunder Hoof ability conducted wonderfully; Mettaurs on the floor exploded outright while the Knots did his favorite twitchy stun dance.</p>
<p>He clicked off his Battery’s draw and charged head-down. Between crushing stomps and battering-ram force he didn’t slow his pace at all as he ran for the obvious stairs in the relatively small space. Only one more stunned Knot stood in his way; Volt flipped him over his horns and took the steps six at a time.</p>
<p>A Death Guardian’s massive shield blocked the stairs. Volt rammed both fists into the thick metal and bulldozed his way up. The hapless mechaniloid pivoted its little body in vain as Volt tackled it into another two shield-carriers in sequence and crashed the stack of them against the third-floor landing.</p>
<p>He dropped them, dust-swiped his hands, and moved on.</p>
<p>
  <em>Power conduits…</em>
</p>
<p>The next room was dome-shaped with hex-pattern walls. A purple scanner eye in a blocky round sphere looked down at the apex. Four armored ridges in the dome connected it to four terminals at ground level.</p>
<p>
  <em>Is that it? That’s gotta be it.</em>
</p>
<p>He jumped and drove his fist into one of the ridges. Sparks flew and snakes of electricity tickled all the way down his arm. He smiled and wished he could suck the power right out.</p>
<p>One down. He switched back to Bright Fang and shot the next ridge with a double tap; the teeth of the late pirate queen Tungsten Angler bit hard and severed the lines. A quarter turn and two more shots gave the same satisfying result on the third conduit ridge.</p>
<p>
  <em>All that fuss for this, huh?</em>
</p>
<p>He leveled his buster at the last ridge and fired one more Fang.</p>
<p>A spinning blade blinked in and out of reality exactly fast enough to parry it.</p>
<p>Volt jerked into a ready combat stance, both fists up. Eloquently pronounced words seemed to come from everywhere.</p>
<p>“Bee-Ell-Enn zero one. Revolutionary Library Notorious Hunter Vee Ay-forty-four. Volt Batteram.” A pause. “Code name Deckard.”</p>
<p>A hot clarity of purpose filled Volt’s core. He kept his back to the terminals. The last conduit lay straight in front of him on the other side of the room.</p>
<p>“Weakness…”</p>
<p>A twinkle of green wireframe to his left was all the warning Volt got. He reacted instantly, swinging his right fist and putting his back into it, knuckle panels volt-charged—</p>
<p>And he drove his arm straight into a comet of goddamned hydromer.</p>
<p>His built-up electricity fizzled on full retreat. His generators went cold. His shields blared. Hard blades bit and scored his chest through the flash.</p>
<p>His assailant vanished as quickly as he came.</p>
<p>“Water.”</p>
<p>It was worse than water. The lukewarm liquid cousin of the ice-like compound cryomer leached into his every seam and damaged the components that gave him his namesake element, even as they rapidly rebooted.</p>
<p><em>Much more of that combo and I’m fragged</em>.</p>
<p>“Tell me,” the ghost said as Volt dripped. “Who resurrected Meteor Showa to such a fine state? I did not think that the Hunters were so… forward-thinking.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Keep him talking. Meteor’s on her way.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>But the objective.</em>
</p>
<p>All doubt fled.</p>
<p>Volt reactivated Assault Battery and made a break for the conduit. The electricity filling his being gave exactly what he needed to leap clear over the head-on water comet.</p>
<p>Meganeural Spectrod appeared at his right in midair and swung the biggest boxcutter he’d ever seen into his torso.</p>
<p>Two blade segments broke off in Volt’s brawny plating even as his shields strobed, but his supercharged momentum took him straight to the ceiling – and, wreathed in ionized air, his peripheral vision caught sight of the cryptid dragonfly’s shields flashing.</p>
<p>Volt uppercut the last conduit right at the apex. The cyber-eye sparked and exploded.</p>
<p>Spectrod was still gone.</p>
<p>Volt landed hard and flashed a Horn Coil at full Assault Battery power. Lightning danced throughout the room. If the bug was there in that axis of space, he would have felt it—</p>
<p>
  <em>Which means—</em>
</p>
<p>The door to the stairs that had been wide open slammed shut and sealed itself. Locking him in.</p>
<p>
  <em>Out of his way.</em>
</p>
<p>Volt charged to the door and introduced it to his fists. The inordinately sturdy surface stood firm.</p>
<p>“Meteor?!”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor wished that she too had a superhero mode to burn.</p>
<p>She pushed her legs as hard as they and her dash system would go, but as the seconds ticked down she found them woefully insufficient.</p>
<p>She came up to the pylon and saw a couple Death Guardians.</p>
<p>
  <em>No sweat, no sweat.</em>
</p>
<p>High-speed propeller blades curved around both sides of the tower.</p>
<p>
  <em>No.</em>
</p>
<p>She jumped them and landed spitting a Melter rocket at the door guards. She grabbed her Gaia Sword and looked up—</p>
<p>Meteor hauled back so fast she even surprised herself. A third blade spun down and embeds deep in the earth.</p>
<p>And then she saw him.</p>
<p>Meganeural Spectrod gracefully hovered down from on high, his giant boxcutter held loose in one hand. The dark green elements of his glossy, gangly armor made the black and white seem more corpselike in the morning light.</p>
<p>“Volcano Roll. Meteor Showa.” He sounded… curious. “Your presence represents an unusual expenditure of Hunter resources, unprecedented for one of your meager skills. I would know why.”</p>
<p>She kept watch for more blades-out-of-nowhere. There weren’t any.</p>
<p>“Where’s Volt.”</p>
<p>“He will not be joining us. You will answer. Why do you live?”</p>
<p>Her throat heated up. “Where is Volt.”</p>
<p>“Irrelevant.” His sword snapped up in his tightening grip – left-handed. “Why. Do you. Live.”</p>
<p>Prominence was ready. “To burn cancers like you out of our future. Don’t think I’m the same as I was before. Your ghost crap is obviously gone and I know your tricks. You won’t beat me again.”</p>
<p>Spectrod stuttered a droll chuckle and leisurely pointed his right palm to his side. Light orange energy balls, will-o-wisps, flitted out of his fingers and started to coalesce.</p>
<p>“Did you really think…”</p>
<p>The lights formed into an orange copy of himself.</p>
<p>“That I would bother to show my full arsenal…”</p>
<p>The spare Spectrod divided again.</p>
<p>“The fruits of my harvest, old and new…”</p>
<p>The genuine article brought up his sword. So did his Soul Bodies.</p>
<p>“… To walking <em>food?!</em>”</p>
<p>He struck first, but he still had distance to cover. Meteor fired an Arbor Wall – down to half energy – grasped the top as it grew, and kickdashed off, firing another seed where she estimated she’d land. Spectrod bisected the first one on the way to her – and her Prominence stream was already in transit.</p>
<p>She thought the swing would open up his guard, but he was just too fast on the defense. The entire blade took the thermite for him. Soul Body 2 collided with the second Wall and expired. Soul Body 1 completed its flyby slash; the impact stung without setting off her shields, yet she still felt her shield battery tick down.</p>
<p><em>Crap</em>.</p>
<p>
  <em>Mix it. Never stop keeping your charge up.</em>
</p>
<p>Her feet hit the ground. She switched weapons to Remote Koi, launched two and dashed out, buying distance, wary of more tricks. Her lava-colored fish sicced him, but with one hand he summoned a protective bubble that refracted their mouth lasers around his body. His sword regenerated a full length of blade segments and he out-twitched her speedy fish, cutting down both inside a second.</p>
<p>She spawned two more and sent them on crash trajectory, but he saw them coming. One he struck down, but the other exploded against him. His shields flickered.</p>
<p><em>So he </em>can<em> be surprised!</em></p>
<p>She tried yet another pair and gave them a Melter rocket for cover, but he went straight for them, too quick to fall for her barrage. One fish got filleted before its kamikaze strike, but she mixed things up and ordered the second to break off its dive and laser him. Spectrod took the hit – and airdashed so fast he blurred.</p>
<p>“Irritant.”</p>
<p>Solid blades ejected from his main four wings, spun up and launched for her. He himself jetted behind them.</p>
<p>The blades spun on a vector exactly like Freezer Ostenops’s fanplates, outside wide then low to scissor. All that differed was the number and the height to clear. She knew how to time her jump.</p>
<p>Meteor switched to Fluid Lockdown, painted the ground ahead and dashed on zero friction. The blades came, she jumped all four in the crossover instant, and she released her charged Prominence in an arc with a jerk of her head.</p>
<p>Spectrod spun like a top and circled to her left. Even with her new parts, there was enough time to fire but not enough to switch weapons or light up a saber, so she twitched her torso to face him and fire off another Fluid Lockdown.</p>
<p>It hit him like a water balloon into a blender. His frosted sword snapped one segment free as it gouged her chest.</p>
<p>Her shields hated that, strobing with the angry intensity of covering for a structural weakness.</p>
<p>
  <em>And so did his.</em>
</p>
<p>She landed. He came for her.</p>
<p>She didn’t want to waste a single Lockdown now. She switched to Arbor Wall and gripped her hi-beam’s hilt.</p>
<p>The Maverick fell back before she could get a bead on him, sending her a flock of eight spinning blades. Buying distance.</p>
<p>
  <em>Spooked, ghost?</em>
</p>
<p>Two seeds formed two walls. The first four blades nicked or chopped them, stealing enough deadly velocity to conveniently let them arrive at the same time as the second four. The instant’s worth of blocking eliminated his strategic staggered grouping and forced them into, essentially, one hit. Meteor had the timing, the reflexes, and the dash cycle to jump them all at once.</p>
<p>He dived at her as she rose.</p>
<p>
  <em>He’ll expect the ice. He’ll prep to dodge liquid.</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor switched back to her fish and finally ignited her main saber.</p>
<p>Several things happened inside of a second. Meteor’s awareness seemed to slow her own clock time to let her appreciate it.</p>
<p>At the peak of her jump, she thrusted a petal-trailing stab. Spectrod tilted ninety degrees and brought up his sword. Her blade slipped past him. He twisted in, sword poised to chop her in half. She raised her buster at his center mass. He corkscrewed back in the other direction and would indeed have dodged a straight fluid jet if she were packing it. Instead, two koi flew free. The bottom one smashed and exploded through a low segment of his sword as he swung it up underneath. It would have severed her left foot and all of tail if her fish hadn’t shortened it. As it was he merely scraped a long hyphen through her armor’s top layer, her shields only lightly slicking over her skin in response.</p>
<p>Her bullet-time perception snapped back to reality. She landed and stowed the saber. She added another fish but he zipped between their lasers and chopped them down with wing-thrown blades.</p>
<p>“Slippery,” he observed, as his sword portions regenerated fresh from the hilt.</p>
<p>Meteor’s throat hummed. “Slicker than you.”</p>
<p>“When wet?”</p>
<p>He pointed his buster arm and launched a hydromer geyser, the head of it spreading to block him from view. She dashed to her left, out of the water comet’s path.</p>
<p>He sped in from above for an overhand decapitation strike…</p>
<p>… <em>Exactly like Elk tried.</em></p>
<p>She jerked back and switched weapons. He scalped a thin rounded section off her buster arm but she scored a beautiful Lockdown splash on him, antifreeze-blue with the completely opposite effect, and followed it up with a Prominence over his protesting shields.</p>
<p>It was the biggest and best hit she could have hoped for.</p>
<p>She paid for it, hard and immediately.</p>
<p>An orange Soul Body whacked her diagonally from her shoulder to her waist seam and disintegrated when her shield flash smacked it away. Spectrod twisted his blade in both hands and swung up – <em>A swallow counter!</em> – screaming metal on metal through her right knee, part of her chest, and her right shoulder.</p>
<p>The pain in her knee was astounding as a tip segment snapped off and stayed behind. Her pauldron flew off from the blow. Her arm stayed on, just barely enough for function, but her shields raved all over again. She was in trouble – serious, sub-third trouble.</p>
<p>Spectrod leisurely buzzed up and away, chuckling.</p>
<p>“Exceptional. Such improved resilience. Your DNA is extraordinary.”</p>
<p>Meteor glanced at the pylon. She heard muffled clanging, steady and insistent.</p>
<p>“That a fact? Is that why you stole most of it?”</p>
<p>“At first? No.” He held his sword loose again, rolling his free wrist. “You were as grass to fill a mud brick in the foundation of the ideal world – a world where only reploids exist. But now before me I see ripened wheat. A far better harvest than the last of your model line.”</p>
<p>Meteor’s namesake Melter hummed up as her eyes widened.</p>
<p>“What did you say?”</p>
<p>Spectrod tilted his chin, heightening the height from which he looked down at her. “Ess-Ess-Kay-Enn thirty-one dash Kay-Ess zero-eight. School Kumonryu. No Notorious Hunter designation. No code name. He never lived long enough to earn one. Or rather, he didn’t <em>last</em> long enough…”</p>
<p>
  <em>No.</em>
</p>
<p>“You didn’t. Kumonryu wasn’t Soul Formatted!”</p>
<p>Spectrod over-dramatically ran his thumb down the length of his blade. “Indeed. The technology wasn’t ready. I had to carve his DNA stem from his brain manually.” He hovered down closer, though still outside her deadly middle range. “Oh? I see you’re angry.”</p>
<p>Her plan to stall was coming apart. Her youngest brother’s memory rang through the hum of her core weapon, just waiting for her will to break and fire and invite her foe to dodge and kill her.</p>
<p><em>Don’t die here</em>, she warned herself. <em>Don’t make them lose another.</em></p>
<p>“And all I see,” she countered, “is a Maverick who knows he’s made. You’ve never been hit like this before, have you? Aww, am I your first?”</p>
<p>He narrowed one eye.</p>
<p>The clanging tone from the tower shifted as if coming from a surface instead of a support strut. Meteor grinned and kept going, playing up the desperate defiance of the doomed.</p>
<p>“A big fat carp catches you with your hood up and you flutter away, too scared to get close again. Getting <em>cold feet</em>, smart guy? Where’s Repliforce to bail you out now?”</p>
<p>He slowly raised his arm. She knew what would follow.</p>
<p>“Ooh,” she wiggled her hands mockingly, “but that’s your real biggest trick, isn’t it? Getting good help and fancy tech to protect you ‘cause you’re made of paper. I’ve got a friend like you – just as mouthy but nowhere near as ugly. Couldn’t steal yourself enough of a soul to get real actual <em>friends</em>, could you, Maverick?”</p>
<p>He snapped his fingers.</p>
<p>Spectral purple holo-fire balls ignited around her.</p>
<p>“One can try.”</p>
<p>Soul Format slammed her from four directions.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Her core burned.</p>
<p>Her guts smoldered.</p>
<p>Her brain crackled.</p>
<p>Her soul was on fire.</p>
<p>But she was <em>made</em> of fire.</p>
<p>The attempted erasure, the attempted feast of flame on everything she was, snuffed out in the firestorm of her will. She would not extinguish. Not that day.</p>
<p>Not before she saw the future she was going to save.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Quite apart from her fires of determination, Meteor was inwardly giddy.</p>
<p>
  <em>It worked it worked it worked! Whatever they did worked! Oh they’re going to be impossible to live with now.</em>
</p>
<p>Outwardly she was consumed in violent violet flame.</p>
<p>Spectrod shouldered his blade and started laughing.</p>
<p>“<em>Nnh</em>… no…!” Meteor hammed it up, raising her buster and playing out dramatically failing strength. She fell to her <em>broken knee ow ow ow OW</em> and shot a feeble Fluid Lockdown jet all over the ground, nowhere near her hovering foe at all.</p>
<p>He found it hilarious.</p>
<p>“Outstandingly spirited.” He beckoned. The flame lifted off her, coalesced into a sphere and slowly hovered back toward him. “Something for him to analyze for weeks… or perhaps I will keep you for myself?”</p>
<p>
  <em>Him?</em>
</p>
<p>Volt finally battered a hole through the pylon’s third floor. An exterior wall panel popped out, dented in the middle.</p>
<p>“<em>Spectrod!</em>” He bellowed.</p>
<p>Spectrod pivoted in midair, supremely arrogant, the Soul Format fireball floating to his waiting hand.</p>
<p>“Pity pity, Deckard. He who hesi—”</p>
<p>Meteor sprang up on her non-busted leg and burned her maximum speed down the zero-friction icepath. Two consecutive Lockdown jets worked hard to shoot faster than she was moving, but they succeeded and splashed on target.</p>
<p>“—taa<em>aaAARGH!</em>”</p>
<p>The burning purple soul, empty of useful data, evaporated as he airdashed backwards. But she was right under him.</p>
<p>Meteor launched two Remote Koi but his reaction time only let one’s blast radius graze a wing. He slashed down the second and the third – Meteor’s last one – as he retreated upward, strobing and frostbitten.</p>
<p>Spectrod threw out his free arm and sprouted a beam blade the size of his boxcutter from his buster cuff. Eight propellers swarmed out of his wings and whirled around him as he spun toward Meteor, a tornado of shredding death.</p>
<p>Meteor clenched her fist. “<em>Volt! Here we go!</em>”</p>
<p>Volt activated Assault Battery and leapt flaring like an electric meteor.</p>
<p>“<em>Final Strike!</em>” The Maverick Hunters shouted.</p>
<p>Meteor dropped back on her tail and fired her dash, skidding ridiculously on her butt all the way back up the makeshift slide she’d spilled in her death act, peppering the Maverick and his propellers with her last five Arbor Walls. Four clusters of roots instantly exploded into gnarled roots and splinters, slowing the solid-mass blades enough for her to slide past their crossfire sweep. The fifth seed arrested Spectrod’s motion and sent him crashing to the earth in a bound T-pose, slashing up soil like a crashing helicopter.</p>
<p>Meteor ran out of ice to slide on and fell flat on her back, her broken leg gracelessly splayed out. Spectrod’s momentum carried him right to her like a runaway sawblade.</p>
<p>Volt crashed into him and went to work.</p>
<p>Splinters flew. Dirt flew. Shield sparks flew. The tumbling pummeling shearing cataclysm rolled itself to a stop.</p>
<p>Meteor righted herself into a runner’s stance and dash one last time down the slick, Gaia Sword in hand.</p>
<p>“<em>Break!</em>” She ordered.</p>
<p>Volt jumped off. Unbelievably, <em>unfairly</em>, Spectrod rose at the waist and lifted his arm—</p>
<p>But Meteor beat him to the final punch.</p>
<p>Her plasma blade stuck her foe through the arm and pierced his opposite shoulder, throwing wide the aim of his last water comet. She wrenched the saber through him to stick in his chest; his slow-blinking shields put up no real resistance.</p>
<p>Spectrod stared at her, eyes lidless.</p>
<p>“Your… ssssoul…”</p>
<p>The cyberwood stake engaged, piercing through the rest of his torso. The earth was his corkboard. Beams of light leaked from his ruptured LIFE cell as Meteor pushed the stake deeper with all her weight, leaning her face down to his.</p>
<p>“Is my own.”</p>
<p>She snapped off the stake, stepped away and watched him expire. The rolling explosion through the Maverick’s body rocked her ears with every satisfying burst.</p>
<p>Meteor didn’t know how she would feel paying back her one-time murderer. She didn’t spend much time at all thinking about that moment. She was so focused on racing back to where she’d been, making up for lost time, that she had failed to set a goalpost, a checkered flag, an end point – because in her experience it never ended. There was always a threat to retire. Always someone to save. Always a way to improve herself, to make better shovels to dig bigger ditches. In all her rebuilding, rapid as it was, she just… never thought she would have a clear milestone for what might be called real progress.</p>
<p>But she was pretty sure that was a contender.</p>
<p>The explosions ended. Volt clapped her on the unbroken shoulder.</p>
<p>His entire front side was scarred, head to hoof. Half his left horn was gone. His armor was gouged so deep in one spot that Meteor saw cables sparking near his central column of spine.</p>
<p>“Sorry for leaving you in there,” she apologized.</p>
<p>“Don’t,” he amicably grunted. “You had it worse. You look terrible, by the way.”</p>
<p>Meteor laughed. It was a relief just to be able to.</p>
<p>“<em>Me</em>, buddy? You look like hell.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:<br/>“Maverick Hunter Bases”</p>
<p>In order to minimize response times and maximize force projection, the Maverick Hunters operate multiple headquarters. The first three are the largest and most vital, having grown explosively from satellite offices after the Day of Sigma. Smaller outposts also exist.</p>
<p>Former Repliforce real estate conquered in the war is currently being refurbished for Maverick Hunter needs, raising many concerns about scope creep.</p>
<p>HQ1 Europe: Geneva, Switzerland. Nerve center of the whole organization, hosting the largest contingents of the 1st, 4th, 5th, 10th, and 17th Units. X and Zero operate directly from here.</p>
<p>HQ2 Central America: Veracruz, Mexico. The Hunters’ main land and sea transport center and keystone of Atlantic naval operations. Much of the campus composes the global hub of the 3rd and 6th Units, with a significant footprint of 4th.</p>
<p>HQ3 East Asia: Tokyo, Japan. 0th, 14th, and 16th’s global hub, as well as the keystone of Pacific operations for the 6th.</p>
<p>HQ4 North America: Mt. Liberty, Ohio, considered part of the Columbus metro. A substantial base for the 4th, 7th, 8th, and 10th. Though the Hunters long deemed a United States headquarters redundant, X relented to American lobbying during his brief tenure as Commander. A heavy personal donation to the Hunters from the governor of Ohio resulted in its designation of HQ4 instead of HQ5, which was built simultaneously.</p>
<p>HQ5 Africa: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Center of all Maverick Hunter air and space transport, housing the largest concentrations of 7th Air and 15th Artillery assets and officers. Also the Eastern Hemisphere hub of the 9th Ranger Unit.</p>
<p>HQ6 Oceania: Darwin, Australia. Key 6th base in the Indian Ocean, main home of the 8th, and 12th Tropical’s main home in the Eastern Hemisphere.</p>
<p>HQ7 South America: Manaus, Brazil. 9th and 12th’s hub in the Western Hemisphere as well as the second-largest space center after HQ5.</p>
<p>HQ8 South Asia: Ghaziabad, India. The best of 2nd Recon comes from here, and for good reason: China hunts its own Mavericks within its geopolitical sphere of influence and firmly repels all Hunter presence. HQ8 very carefully watches their movements while supporting HQ5 on operations in Southwest Asia.</p>
<p>HQ9 North Asia: Arkhangelsk, Russia. Defunct; destroyed early in the Repliforce War along with most of 13th Polar and many 15th Artillery assets.</p>
<p>HQ10 LEO: Low-Earth Orbit. Defunct; destroyed late in the Repliforce War along with practically all of 11th Space as a stepping stone to Final Weapon.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Next Stage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meteor returns home to the next phase of the war -- with a promotion -- and is given her next four Mavericks. Her siblings keep in touch.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The morning sun twinkled off the corpse of the Maverick.</p>
<p>Meganeural Spectrod lay broken and exploded, felled at last by a Final Strike from the mighty Maverick Hunter duo of Meteor Showa and Volt Batteram.</p>
<p>And he kept laying there.</p>
<p>“Crap,” Meteor swore, “we gotta bring him with us.”</p>
<p>“Why?” Asked Volt.</p>
<p>“If we leave the remains and book it back to Saltie, Repliforce will just sweep in and take it. Then we won’t get as much for all this work.”</p>
<p>“Point.” Volt, though fantastically scarred after the fight, picked up the blasted shell that was Spectrod’s torso. “Damn guy weighed nothing.”</p>
<p>Meteor picked up a blown-off wing and that stupid boxcutter sword, which was down to one chipped segment and evidently unwilling to generate more. “Ghosts don’t tend to,” she remarked.</p>
<p>Extremely late missiles from the Metal Rhea assault vehicles whistled in from the south. Both Hunters rushed for the cover of the nonfunctional Cyberspace pylon, though Meteor took it at a limp. The missiles burst too far away from them to matter.</p>
<p>“Saltie,” she commed. “It’s Showa. Spectrod is retired and Volt and I are seriously injured.”</p>
<p>“Well I’ll be,” Grit Assaultie laughed like a shaking tin can full of gravel. “Nice work, <em>fine</em> work!”</p>
<p>“Gonna have to hoof it back, though. We might need an escort to punch through.”</p>
<p>“No worries,” Saltie sounded like he was moving, “with that bug swatted I’m finally clear to help Monitor and the lads button up the Gap. Won’t be a man jack left to trouble you. You safe?”</p>
<p>“For now, sure,” she wished she’d saved a Remote Koi for recon, “but I’m not sure how much more’s coming from the south. We hobbled a couple Rheas but they’re still active.”</p>
<p>A missile struck the pylon to punctuate her sentence, but the tower was remarkably sturdy.</p>
<p>“And their aim is improving.”</p>
<p>“Then you’d better pop outta there,” Saltie’s comm carried a ride chaser hum. “Don’t go dyin’ at this point.”</p>
<p>“Won’t. Showa out.”</p>
<p>“Moving?” Volt picked up Spectrod’s discarded arm.</p>
<p>“Yeah. Sounds like it’s a mop-up now.”</p>
<p>“Mm.”</p>
<p>A kilometer to the north, a bombed-out casino rose over a racetrack for flesh-and-blood horses – one of the animals that humans took the greatest pains to keep alive even as biodiversity plummeted. A few of them wandered loose, oblivious to the danger they were in. They whinnied and scattered at the Hunters’ approach.</p>
<p>“Saltie,” Meteor commed, “we’re at a horse track.”</p>
<p>“Copy,” he replied, over cracks of buster fire and the hiss of sandblasting. “Now sit tight inside and we’ll pave your road back. Just don’t nick any poker chips down there!” He laughed at his own joke, but Meteor heard real relief in it.</p>
<p>She was content to wait. Volt’s typical economy of language made for a companionable walk.</p>
<p>The casino lobby carried all the bright attempted class of a nowheresville gaming center. Checkered patterns and shiny brass featured heavily. Automated tables and slots awaited players who had fled for their lives. A brown horse wandered through, dully perplexed.</p>
<p>Meteor had never seen a real-life horse in person before. She had to admit to curiosity. The horse investigated a discarded coin tub at the slots and snorted when there was no food in it.</p>
<p>“Hey… guy.” Meteor waved.</p>
<p>The horse regarded her curiously and stepped closer, its hooves muffled by the carpeting.</p>
<p>“Oh no it’s coming Volt what do I do.”</p>
<p>“It’s a horse.”</p>
<p>“That observation’s the opposite of helpful.”</p>
<p>The horse sniffed the air in her direction. She boldly stepped up and put out a hand to pet it, but it nickered and shook its head away.</p>
<p>“Too aggressive,” said Volt. “Here.”</p>
<p>He stood perfectly still, one arm holding Maverick parts to his chest, and extended his free hand low. The horse investigated, sniffing at his palm. Without a hint of forcefulness he reached up and petted the horse’s neck. It allowed it.</p>
<p>“They can read hostility,” Volt gently noted.</p>
<p>“But I wasn’t being hostile.”</p>
<p>“He didn’t know that.”</p>
<p>“Huh. Did you used to work with animals?”</p>
<p>“Some. Home lab near Houston neighbored a ranch. Used to help there, between reliability tests.”</p>
<p>Meteor stayed back so as not to spoil the moment. It was… cute, almost.</p>
<p>“I knew a couple horses, reploids that is,” she said. “Aqua Kelpie, most recently. Nice guy. Gentle.”</p>
<p>“Tend to be,” Volt replied, stroking the horse’s mane. “Humans match us well, most times.”</p>
<p>“Us?”</p>
<p>“Y’know. Animal-types.” He stroked the horse’s back. “They have myths, traditions, memes about animals. Ideas about how they behave. Sometimes they see a trait when our personality’s still compiling in matrix and they think, no, this guy doesn’t fit a boar after all, he’s more of a ram. Some redesigns are cheap.”</p>
<p>Meteor blinked. Volt was seldom so talkative, and certainly not about himself. “You?”</p>
<p>“Mm. First draft of my design was named Assault Hampere. Horns were tusks. Had a pig nose and everything.”</p>
<p>Meteor couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh no that was rude I’m so sorry.”</p>
<p>“No problem. They were right.”</p>
<p>Meteor set her share of Spectrod’s parts on a roulette table and sat down. “My brothers and sister and I were the opposite. Our bodies were going to be a line of koi, no matter what traits emerged in the genesis stage.”</p>
<p>“You fine with it?”</p>
<p>She shrugged. “Eh, chassis swaps cost a lot more than I’m worth.”</p>
<p>“Not a no.”</p>
<p>“Heh.” Meteor rubbed behind her head. “Well, there’s this legend that says if a koi makes it over a waterfall after trying for a hundred years, it turns into a dragon. I always thought that might be cool, being a dragon.”</p>
<p>“Already got the breath,” Volt smirked.</p>
<p>She laughed with him.</p>
<p>Ultimately the horse smelled something more interesting and wandered off. Volt sat next to Meteor and they settled into a quiet moment.</p>
<p>“Thanks,” he said, raising a fist. “For taking me along.”</p>
<p>“You were exactly who I needed.” She knocked wrists with him. “A friend at my back.”</p>
<p>“Mm,” he smiled.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>The resistance at the bottleneck was destroyed. In no time at all Irwin the Chrysoprase regular came with two auto-follow ride chasers. The Hunters gathered up the remains of Meteor’s nemesis and rode back north through some impressive battle wreckage on their way to the forward position at the golf course.</p>
<p>Iron Monitor was there, green armor gouged and blast-scored but in one piece. Saltie looked as fit as ever.</p>
<p>“So then!” The giant crocodile clapped. “Ready to ship off?”</p>
<p>“Yep,” Meteor yepped. “Thanks for everything, you two are great. We saw the battlefield on the way up.”</p>
<p>Monitor rubbed his neck. “Your Hotarions really came in handy. Could’ve used Saltie earlier, but the situation demanded he stay back.”</p>
<p>“No offense intended,” she looked up at Saltie, “but why’s that? You seem at least as sturdy as Monitor.”</p>
<p>“And I am,” he grinned a mile of teeth, “but aside from being the designated last man standing, my special’s called Salt Pillar for a reason. Not a soul in Darwin wanted the bug nickin’ it.”</p>
<p>“Lucky for me I’m not special enough,” Monitor rolled his eyes but his tone – though battle-roughened – suggested a joke. “Nothing worth stealing, apparently.”</p>
<p>“What can you do?” Volt broke his silence to ask, professionally sizing the lizard up.</p>
<p>“Hit things hard,” Monitor appraised him right back.</p>
<p>“Really,” Volt smirked with interest.</p>
<p>Monitor tapped his chest between the big red shield projectors. “This armor’s like wearing a Raiden – not too many people have the LIFE output for it. My cell’s energen catalyzers do. My special’s a passive called Maximum – basically a superpower mode. I hear your slice of Fourth needs defense muscle? That’s me.”</p>
<p>Volt rubbed his chin with a knuckle. “You box much?”</p>
<p>“Not a lot of practice,” Monitor rolled a shoulder. “All my sparring partners keep getting laid out.”</p>
<p>“That a fact?” Volt, <em>oh no</em>, thumbed at Meteor in a way that let him subtly flex. “Meteor could tell you how hard I put mine down.”</p>
<p>“And I’m sure her opinion’s a good one,” Monitor winked at her before planting his huge fists on his hips, “but I bet if you got inside my reach I could knock you out before the bell’s over.”</p>
<p>They stared each other down. The air between them seemed to shimmer. Meteor imagined dramatic katakana floating by.</p>
<p>Volt broke the amicable standoff to nod approvingly at Meteor. “I like him.”</p>
<p>“That’s the spirit,” Saltie piped up. “Now, final bits. You two got a ticket straight back to Veracruz. Monitor here’s headed back to Darwin for repairs and the last paperwork, then he’ll be off to join you. Us, we’ll sweep up Repliforce and keep the Mavs from pulling this again. Think we’ll keep the pylon off, though. Now go home and get repaired already! You both look like you’ve been shot at n’ missed and shit at n’ hit.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Repairs took until four in the afternoon, Veracruz local time. The Lifesavers were tasked to capacity; several were deployed to the field.</p>
<p>The initial shock of emergency fighting had begun to settle into a new global campaign. Wheels were spinning at speed. X was still in California; Zero, it was rumored, was leading the search for Major Quartus. More officers from HQ2 were out. Only the Fourth, with its commander occupied and its second-in-command on an emergency deployment to help with an outbreak in Nova Orleans, was still sorting out its last officer deployments.</p>
<p>Despite that, Meteor left her surgery room in spirits so high she wanted to dance. She beat the guy who beat her. She hadn’t regained all the functionality that she lost, but she still felt stellar. Mavericks took from her, Repliforce took from her, and she gave back, oh yes she did… but facing her foe and winning was never about revenge. It was about climbing back up. Climbing that waterfall.</p>
<p>She was feeling half dragon already when she received a surprise message from her siblings.</p>
<p>All of them.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>Hello, everyone. Upon request from Asagi, I have established this cortical text communication channel among our sibling line. Given the busy circumstances we</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>Helloooooo everybody! (⊙ᗜ⊙)</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>find ourselves in, it seemed</p>
<p>&gt;[C.SANKE]</p>
<p>Hey.</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>that it would be prudent to</p>
<p>&gt;[G.CHAGOI]</p>
<p>HELLO SORRY IF I’M QUIET IN THE MIDDLE OF WELDING RIGHT NOW :)</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>have an easy means by which</p>
<p>&gt;[S.KOHAKU]</p>
<p>۹(ÒہÓ)۶</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>we might communicate. Now if everyone would</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>butts</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>please exercise proper etiquette when using</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>butts</p>
<p>&gt;[C.SANKE]</p>
<p>butts,</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUKAJU]</p>
<p>this channel, we might</p>
<p>&gt;[S.KOHAKU]</p>
<p>(≧艸≦*)</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>Dance party! └|ﾟεﾟ|┐ ┌|ﾟзﾟ|┘ └|ﾟεﾟ|┐</p>
<p>&gt;[C.SANKE]</p>
<p>Sure. (〜￣△￣)〜</p>
<p>&gt;[S. KOHAKU]</p>
<p>〜(꒪꒳꒪)〜</p>
<p>&gt;[G.CHAGOI]</p>
<p>:)-\-&lt;</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>
  <em>For goodness sake, stop that!</em>
</p>
<p>&gt;[A.TANCHO]</p>
<p>home’s chaotic love</p>
<p>reaching everywhere we go</p>
<p>did you think this through?</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>Well I like it at least.</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p><em>Thank you</em>, Showa.</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>Big sister! ヾ(＾∇＾)</p>
<p>&gt;[C.SANKE]</p>
<p>‘Sup.</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>Just be glad you didn’t set auto-notifications, Kujaku.</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>Please. I know the kind of</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>butts</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>nonsense our siblings – <em>stop that</em> – would get up to. Incidentally, by virtue of my position I was made privy to your recent excursion. How are you convalescing?</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>I just got out, actually. I really should get back to work soon.</p>
<p>&gt;[C.SANKE]</p>
<p>Dude. Chill.</p>
<p>&gt;[S.KOHAKU]</p>
<p>(ﾟдﾟ；)</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>Your dedication is remarkable.</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>Yeah, well, I’ve just seen enough to not need a bunch of prep time or research with every single retirement mission anymore. Not having department duties really helps free up my schedule.</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>We always did share the same difficulty with extended leisure. However, I cannot imagine filling my spare time with such consistent retirement duty.</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>What can I say? It needs doing.</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>How many more Mavs did they give you? Four, eight? :;(∩´﹏`∩);:</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>Not sure yet. I’ve already done five this period. And there’s</p>
<p>&gt;[S.KOHAKU]</p>
<p>ΣΣ(ﾟДﾟ;)</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>But we’re only five days in! Σ(T□T) And four of them were on post-war footing! (T⌓T)</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>So?</p>
<p>&gt;[C.SANKE]</p>
<p>Heh. So cool.</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>Thanks. But there’s something I need to tell you guys.</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>What is it?</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>You’re dating again??? ♡(ŐωŐ人)</p>
<p>&gt;[S.KOHAKU]</p>
<p>( ˘ ³˘)  ( ˘ ³˘)  ( ˘ ³˘)</p>
<p>&gt;[C.SANKE]</p>
<p>Asagi ships you with</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>SHUT UP!!! (⋋▂⋌)</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>No. It’s about Kumonryu.</p>
<p>It’s about how he died.</p>
<p>I have no real proof, but the Maverick that I – that Volt and I just retired said that he did it. “Meganeural Spectrod.” He was modeled on a cryptid, sort of like a dragonfly. Lots of solid blades. His weaponry certainly matched with Kumonryu’s injuries, and he corroborated the state Kumonryu’s brain was found in. I really think he was the one. And now he’s retired. R&amp;D is looking over what’s left of him.</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>Oh sister…</p>
<p>&gt;[G.CHAGOI]</p>
<p>:(</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>I’ll contact my counterpart in Veracruz and render aid remotely. I’m owed a favor.</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>Thanks. I think I should get back to the roster now. I shouldn’t just loiter in the medbay.</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>I’m certain that you can handle it, sister. You’re the strongest of us all.</p>
<p>&gt;[A.TANCHO]</p>
<p>dutiful sister</p>
<p>wishes of safety follow</p>
<p>from waking to sleep</p>
<p>&gt;[S.KOHAKU]</p>
<p>(=￣▽￣=)Ｖ</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>You can do it! ( ｀д´)b  Just be careful.（/｡＼)</p>
<p>&gt;[G.CHAGOI]</p>
<p>WHAT THEY SAID :)</p>
<p>&gt;[C.SANKE]</p>
<p>Yeah. Take care.</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>Thank you. Excuse me for leaving early.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>She closed the family channel and peeked into Skittle’s upgrade lab, more than ready to spend at least some of whatever zenny she had coming.</p>
<p>The room was littered with action figures. X and Zero, in tiny multiple, stood arrayed in many dramatic poses on available surfaces.</p>
<p>Meteor stepped further in. Other figures of high-name Hunters, some deceased, stood with the blue and red. A plastic representation of Halcyon had his butt in the air. Several of the deadliest Hunters in history were posed as if winding up to kick or spank him.</p>
<p>“Bandai never made one of you, can you believe it?”</p>
<p>Meteor looked back as Skittle flew in, ignoring her to fill an oversized wicker picnic basket with tools and components from among the toys.</p>
<p>“Don’t mind me, just dippin’ in and out. Specky’s DNA’s not cooked yet and I’m short on time.”</p>
<p>“But time enough for action figures?”</p>
<p>“Care package from my sib back in Cardiff,” Skittle rolled a wrist at it all.</p>
<p>Meteor’s jaw dropped. “<em>You</em> have a sibling? <em>You</em>.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but they lack the disposition for this line’a work.” Skittle pulled out a drawer and grabbed a handful of nerve-wire bundles. “You know how it is, you do.”</p>
<p>She did, at that. “Still. Toys?”</p>
<p>“Wanted to cheer me up. They guessed, and right on the money too, that I’d be a little uppercase-yu Upset from Major Arsepain’s farewell.”</p>
<p>Meteor nodded, slowly. “You doing okay? Reacting to it, I mean.”</p>
<p>Skittle heaved a sigh, snowing glitter off their wings. They snapped their fingers and the door snapped shut.</p>
<p>“S’like this, like,” they tossed down their basket with a swish and a clatter. “Repliforce will follow Major Malfunction’s opportunistic order to the last man, and everybusybody knows it. But what <em>really</em> burns my dander is that they know it too. Fella even said so. They know they’ve lost, they know that it’s over. But they’re taking our future with them. All of ours – and it’s easy, like, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>Meteor cautiously glanced to the door, but it was sealed red-light tight. Skittle barreled on, flying back and forth with their hands behind their back, pacing in the air.</p>
<p>“So <em>easy</em>, being so <em>selfish</em>. Good military decision too, isn’t it? Go down swinging. Take the world with you. But they even took <em>tomorrow</em>, ‘cause with us cleaning them up we’ll get caught out of step with some new crisis again.” They hand-chopped the air for emphasis. “Again. And again. And again. Something else, something else, there will never <em>not</em> be an else. We are in an else-rich environment. A surplus of elses.” They threw their arms out, banishing the elses, “Well <em>bollocks</em> to that noise! The sooner that blighted army’s in the ground, the sooner we can set upon the next disaster. If war’s our future, well, I’mma make sure we <em>excel</em> at it.”</p>
<p>They tilted their head at a mad angle. “Which I could do a lot easier, if, I’m <em>there, to do it</em>. <em>Meteor</em>.”</p>
<p>She blinked. The twitch of Skittle’s eyelids told a story.</p>
<p>“You’re upset that I didn’t take you.”</p>
<p>“No, I was <em>upset</em> when the Rezador figure turned out to be a knockoff. What I am with <em>you</em>,” they prodded a finger under her lower lip, “is perturbed, trending up to aggravated. You think I didn’t know we’d netted the bug? I kept waiting and waiting for your call,” they mockingly waved their hands around, “‘<em>Hey Skittle, heck gosh, it sure would be stupid great if you could freakin’ help be beat the crap out of the darn guy who near murdered me!</em>’ Kept waiting and waiting with my thumbs up the arsehole I don’t have for you to let me take the safeties off my fun guns and turn that friend-stealing son of five strangers into <em>vapor!</em>” They kicked a model ride armor off a shelf. “Waited and <em>waited</em>, I did!”</p>
<p>“Skittle,” Meteor tried to de-escalate, “you said yourself he could cut through a shield refresh. And he <em>did</em>. All you have is shields. You might’ve died.”</p>
<p>“I might’ve—?! D’you think I even—?!” They snatched up the basket and resumed grabbing tools. “I’m your engineer, dammit, I can’t keep you alive if you don’t <em>trust</em> me enough to know I know what I’m doing.”</p>
<p>“It’s not about trust,” she insisted, “it’s just tactics. I can’t keep <em>you</em> safe or alive if I keep bringing you into fights with people tailored to your weaknesses. I thought you’d have trusted <em>me</em> enough to know what <em>I’m</em> doing.”</p>
<p>Skittle’s fury seemed to finally burn out. They hung hovering in the air.</p>
<p>“You kept me from doing the best I could for you, Meteor. It hurt. Just a little.”</p>
<p>“Oh, Skittle,” Meteor sighed, “that’s all you had to say. I don’t regret my choice, but I’m sorry it hurt.”</p>
<p>Skittle shot her a look and snapped their basket shut. “And I’m late. At least I can dissect that bastard’s body down to glitter. So thanks for that much.”</p>
<p>The door hiss-snapped back open and Skittle flew out without another word.</p>
<p>Meteor had dealt with much worse from them. At least their occasional brattiness never lacked a cause. She picked up the toy ride armor and put it back.</p>
<p>She was five steps back into the medbay when Deco tested her armor with a high-speed hug.</p>
<p>“<em>Mimi!</em> I’m so so <em>sooo</em> sorry I couldn’t sit in with you like you did for me! I just got out of bed!”</p>
<p>“Come on, I wasn’t that bad off.”</p>
<p>“It’s the principle of the thing, doof,” Deco peeled herself off. “Volt’s almost out – something about hydromer damage? – but I can’t sit in with him either. Brother sent me to fetch you two for some special debrief and then I’ll be off welcoming the new guy.”</p>
<p>“Oh, is Monitor here already?”</p>
<p>Deco’s bubbly cheer started to flatten. “Not yet. I hear you met him, though, is he nice?”</p>
<p>“He seemed okay. Bet he’ll get on famously with Volt.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, punch meets sandbag, heh.” She twiddled one of her hair curls. “It’s a shame, though. If I knew about your mission, I’d have wanted to be there…”</p>
<p>Meteor touched Deco’s shoulder to stop a second consecutive friend from pontificating. “You wouldn’t have. You really, really wouldn’t. The only part you’d have liked was the horse.”</p>
<p>“There were <em>horses?</em>” Gasped Deco, suddenly a child.</p>
<p>“Just one. It didn’t like me though.”</p>
<p>Volt approached, his body good as new. “She’s not a horse person.”</p>
<p>“Well <em>I </em>could’ve told you that,” Deco giggled. “C’mon, tell me more on the way.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Nouveau sat tall in the main backless seat at the central table of the Command Room as the three Lieutenants entered. His face and posture had shed all stress and drama; though a bit late, he fully looked the part of second-in-command.</p>
<p>“Thank you, Deco. That will be all.”</p>
<p>“Yes sir, Captain Little Brother sir,” she crisply saluted and marched out, knees high.</p>
<p>Nouveau took it without a flinch – impressively, in Meteor’s opinion. She knew what force sibling teases had. The door slid closed and sealed itself.</p>
<p>“Now,” he commenced. “Turtle’s still out fortifying Lisbon, but she and I are both glad you made it through, Lieutenants.”</p>
<p>“Me too,” Meteor agreed. “I really would’ve been roasted without Volt.”</p>
<p>“Back at you,” Volt grunted.</p>
<p>“Oh no you don’t, no back-ats, that compliment’s sticking right to you.”</p>
<p>“Fine, then I’ve got my own. She made all the right choices, Captain.”</p>
<p>“Coulda been better,” she doubted.</p>
<p>“No back-ats and no peel-offs either,” Volt countered.</p>
<p>“Dink.” She knuckle-tapped him.</p>
<p>Nouveau keyed in something at the main terminal. “The fact of the matter is, you’re alive and well and a conditional S-Class has been retired. Not only that, but Australia is now in a much better position to repel an occupation – which made rosters easier – and Sixteenth has something new to chew on.”</p>
<p>The bust of Valence Proteus took up the central holo.</p>
<p>“Ah,” said the amoeba. “Meteor Showa, Volt Batteram. Eleven minutes ago we completed DNA deconstruction on the parts you two recovered. Still, I felt it of value to hear your debrief. Which I presume is impending.”</p>
<p>“Immediately, in fact,” said Nouveau. “Step us through, Lieutenants.”</p>
<p>Meteor did most of the talking. Volt gave his side of it where necessary.</p>
<p>Proteus offered not a word until the end. “And that was all he used in combat?”</p>
<p>“Yes sir. I honestly thought he’d have worse in his vee-wess, or even a larger one.”</p>
<p>“He did not,” Proteus stroked his flagellum mustache. “The remains of Meganeural Spectrod were equipped with a Variable Weapon Emulation System Dash Four. Hydro Comet: Aqua Kelpie, stolen personally. Soul Body: Split Mushroom, archival. Buster Sword: Swordsaint Tsubame, archival. And finally… Soul Format. It was not a core system as we initially suspected. Origin unknown, serial data unavailable, but most definitely an emulation.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Holy crap.</em>
</p>
<p>Volt beat Meteor to the question: “From who?”</p>
<p>“‘From <em>whom</em>,’” Proteus corrected, “is a question to which the entirety of the Veracruz Sixteenth – and, as of nine minutes ago, one rather insistent specialist from the Tokyo Sixteenth – is currently devoting itself. The implication of a Maverick originator is… troubling, as you might imagine.”</p>
<p>“Speaking of implications…” Meteor began.</p>
<p>Proteus’s upper three pupils dilated. “This ‘<em>him</em>’ whom Spectrod mentioned. Indeed. A collaborator, or possibly a leader, necessitates haste. I concede the need for help, and will enlist it. Laguz Island has a specialist upon whom I can call. Captain, handle the rest.”</p>
<p>Proteus vanished. Nouveau <em>hmph</em>ed at his curtness.</p>
<p>“With that, let me give praise where it’s due. Both of you did exceptionally well, especially given the circumstances. Your Maverick’s threat rating was, again, conditional, but I’ve gotten you the high end in total payout: eighty thousand zenny. You’ve earned it. As A-Ranks.”</p>
<p>Meteor’s heart filled with fireworks.</p>
<p>“Plural?”</p>
<p>“Plural.” Nouveau stood and shifted his tone to formality. “Lieutenant Meteor Showa, in light of your combat specifications, armament, past service experience, and performance on a Class S mission, Research and Development has assessed your combat rating as Rank A. You already know the benefits – and responsibilities. Congratulations.”</p>
<p>Volt nodded her way. “Congrats.”</p>
<p>Meteor felt entirely too sparkly inside to string syllables together.</p>
<p>Nouveau sat back down. “That will be all. Don’t let your new rosters linger. Let’s ensure this new crisis passes like all the rest.”</p>
<p>“Thank you,” Meteor managed to squeak. She rubbed her hands and hustled to a terminal as Volt walked to a neighboring one.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>MHHQ2-4 PERSONNEL ROSTER (RETIREMENT DUTY)</p>
<p>RANK [A], [LT.] [METEOR SHOWA]</p>
<p>[September 6 addendum to]</p>
<p>[10-Day] PERIOD STARTING [September 2, 21XX]</p>
<p>Unit Analysis Officer [NOUVEAU]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>ARC MORPHO (A-Class, high)</p>
<p>&gt;Known Weaponry:</p>
<p>Dancing Spark, Shining Spark, Photon Lance, Photon Glare, Falling Glass</p>
<p>&gt;Personality:</p>
<p>Zealous SIGINT specialist, calculating and fond of misdirection.</p>
<p>&gt;Commentary:</p>
<p>I remember her. She served the 0<sup>th</sup> Unit here until Repliforce poached her like so many others. She and her forces took over an antenna array in the Andes and are using it to intrusively broadcast propaganda on multiple bands while insinuating messages into normal media. Her public slanders are just annoying for now, but her rapid coordination with the rest of Repliforce is going to make battles worse for everyone until you shut her up. Hit her hard and often – she will absolutely see you coming, and I hear she has phenomenal shields.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>CHASER GIRTABOMB (A-Class)</p>
<p>&gt;Known Weaponry:</p>
<p>Clutch Bomb, Denial Vulcan, Beam Skate, War Tail</p>
<p>&gt;Personality:</p>
<p>Arrogant hotshot with the skill to back his mouth.</p>
<p>&gt;Commentary:</p>
<p>One of my favorite Battle &amp; Chase competitors, actually, until he turned Repliforce the minute the war started. Eight days ago he and a sizable contingent took his old home, the Maracaibo Speedway, and converted the neighboring automotive plant into a war factory. They’re in such strength that they repelled a strike by the Venezuelan military. A whole basket of Hunters is chomping at the bit to knock Girtabomb out – apparently old fans of his too – but I picked you because you’re familiar with all the mechaniloids that place is producing. Air or sea assault are untenable due to the urban proximity and all the guns they put up, so you’re going in on his turf.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>DEEPWELL ORANGUTANK (A-Class)</p>
<p>&gt;Known Weaponry:</p>
<p>Fracture Drills, Well Bore, Hydro Spike</p>
<p>&gt;Personality:</p>
<p>Once a credit to the scientific community, now erratic and dangerously paranoid.</p>
<p>&gt;Commentary:</p>
<p>Last month this renowned geologist sealed himself in his underground lab for fear of Mavericks coming to get him. We’ve tried repeated contacts, even telling him that Repliforce collapsed, but he kept raving about how we’re all Sigma trying to trick him. His assistants swore they could get through to him, but now they’ve stopped responding, which makes us think he killed them all. To make matters worse, his lab is a flooded cave complex in Venezuela where energen deposits are now harvest-ready. We need that resource to help rebuild, and if there’s a mad ape ready to attack anyone who goes down there… we can’t have that.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>SOUNDING HUMPBACK (A-Class, high)</p>
<p>&gt;Known Weaponry:</p>
<p>Chorus Cannon, Shock Lance, Depth Note, Bubble Net</p>
<p>&gt;Personality:</p>
<p>Protective, which makes her dangerous. She’ll pull no punches because she can’t afford to lose. I suspect you know her better than I do.</p>
<p>&gt;Commentary:</p>
<p>Your old friend in the Sixth whom you had so judiciously refused to discharge despite her controversial socio-political views. Literally the minute that we got word of Final Weapon going down, she and her team dropped all contact. Forty-one hours later they turned up in the company of a pirate crew on an old wave-farm rig in the South Atlantic. They’ve declared it the Free State of Light. Known criminals and ex-Repliforce are gathering there to enjoy her protection, but we can’t simply bombard it because, unbelievably, some of the scum is human. Sink Humpback and any pirates you can so that follow-up teams can save the humans from themselves.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor thought.</p>
<p>Her intimate knowledge of the needs of infrastructure leaned her away from Humpback – or at least she convinced herself that was what it was. She took a closer look at the ape.</p>
<p>
  <em>Doctor Deepwell Orangutank, geologist, geochemist, energy physicist and mobile fracker. That earthquake felt in Caracas was probably his doing, now that I think of it. Drills for days, and a pile of energen… both could be useful to secure, maybe even for a foothold on Girtabomb. And the cave’s flooded, is it…?</em>
</p>
<p>She selected him.</p>
<p>She heard a simultaneous selection noise from Volt. She looked over.</p>
<p>“Nova Orleans,” he said. “Mermaid goat. You?”</p>
<p>“Cave system under the Meridas. Orangutan.”</p>
<p>“Mm. Good hunting.”</p>
<p>“<em>Expedient</em> hunting,” Nouveau added.</p>
<p>She intended both.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:<br/>“Combat Rank and Threat Class”</p>
<p>Hunters of all organizational ranks bear a Combat Rank (“Rank”), which indicates them as a theoretical match to a corresponding Threat Class (“Class”) of Maverick.<br/>The listing here reflects Class. Hunters of commensurate Rank are often called to retire such hostiles, alone or in groups.</p>
<p>E: Hazardous to property. Typically a small to medium mechaniloid experiencing software malfunctions or enthrallment. Left to local law enforcement.</p>
<p>D: Hazardous to life. A non-combat reploid or a large mechaniloid that has “gone Maverick” beyond the ability of local law enforcement to contain. Maverick Hunter regulars take care of it.</p>
<p>C: Genuinely lethal. A combat-ready reploid or mechaniloid that can easily kill humans by conventional armament or clever application of equipment. Local military forces may handle a C-Class Maverick if their schedules and resources allow, but most militaries readily defer to the Hunters for such threats.</p>
<p>B: Significant danger to any number of unarmed humans unless stopped. A B-Class often possesses a powerful WEAPON system that can readily kill, with or without combat training. Militaries are often mobilized to combat it, whether or not the Hunters are called in as well. A well-trained and well-equipped human specialist can, with prep time, defeat such a Maverick.</p>
<p>A: Deadly threat to any number of humans unless stopped. The presence of an A-Class Maverick necessitates fast-as-possible Hunter presence and very frequently involves national military response. Only the very best human soldiers on Earth can, if fully equipped, hope to prevail against a Class A in single combat; sending reploids is simply more efficient.</p>
<p>S or SA: “Special” or “Special A” – a dire and potentially nation-scale threat similar to an A, but beyond the ability of any human, however well trained or equipped, to answer. No military in the world allows a human anywhere near an S-Class Maverick, even to bombard its position. In most cases military reploids simply help to secure the operative area for the Hunters.</p>
<p>G: “Great,” “Grand,” or even “Giant.” More powerful on paper than even an S, G represents a catastrophic threat to multiple countries unless stopped. Reploids of this Class or Rank are quite often “more weapon than person,” manufactured with body specifications and/or a WEAPON system that make them either a great defender or great calamity from the moment they activate.</p>
<p>P: “Perfect.” A threat to all life. Only one Maverick has ever held this Class, and his name was Sigma. By strict definition, Class P is capable of “global at-will force projection of Class S weaponry or higher,” which Sigma could only do through his supreme command of nearly every Maverick on Earth. A Maverick that could do so under their own power would be a true nightmare. All the world’s countermeasures against such a threat are “Rank P” artillery such as the Enigma cannon or Final Weapon, built in the hope that they would never need to be used.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Mission 6: Deepwell Orangutank</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meteor takes on Deepwell Orangutank, a mad geologist in charge of an energen cave. His madness lashes out at Meteor and Repliforce both.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Meteor teleported down into primordial darkness. There was no light source whatsoever, so she made one; tiny infrared lamps at the corners of her eyes gently flared, painting the world off-color. She found herself on bare stone at the edge of a subterranean pond. Spatial sensors filled in the rest of her awareness. She was alone in a bubble of humid rock.</p>
<p>“Showa to Fifth?”</p>
<p>There was no reply for a moment. “This is Fifth Communications,” an unfamiliar male voice eventually said, young and pleasantly customer-service but with the subtle unbreathing quality of a reploid voice. “I’m afraid your primary and secondary preferred operators are tasked to capacity. My name’s Andrew, how may I assist?”</p>
<p>“Just wondering why I got a hot drop. And, uh, why the matter phase shunted me into a dark spot. Was First not able to get a pad in?”</p>
<p>“Let me see…” Andrew made some busywork humming noises. “While I look, please understand that your communication is very important to us. Are you in danger?”</p>
<p>“Not a bit. You reading something to the contrary, Andrew?”</p>
<p>“No ma’am. The energen density is making some things fuzzy, but I see you’re in a safe area… ah! It seems that with most forces now tasked to Repliforce activity, only a pair of Ninth Unit operatives from Manaus could be spared to breach a main hatchway into an open area ahead of you. Unfortunately they were unable to secure a pad due to enemy presence… which looks to still be there and thereabouts.”</p>
<p>Meteor slipped into the water as, for lack of sunlight, her fuel tank kept her LIFE cell regulated and her brain at peak sharpness. “What presence do you mean, exactly?”</p>
<p>“Numerous heavy excavation and collection mechaniloids, and, hm-hmm… some territorial defense units… oh dear.”</p>
<p>“Oh dear?”</p>
<p>“It looks like Repliforce breached a different entrance. It must have been within the last hour. They’re occupying the lab proper and trickling in, probably to harvest. The cavern is extensive, so you could probably avoid… mmm, <em>some</em> of them if you take the water as far as it goes. The thing is, I’m… <em>tsk</em>, yeah… getting some light mechaniloid pings in there, and you’d probably be easy to ambush.”</p>
<p>Meteor swam along, avoiding scraping the pointy stalagmites and stalactites of the flooded passage. Her infrared lamps were cone-area, so she swept them wide over her path.</p>
<p>“How far is this navigable?”</p>
<p>The line went dead.</p>
<p>“Andrew?” No reply. “Fifth Communications Unit, this is Meteor Showa, do you copy?”</p>
<p>Static. The angles of the water passage grew more claustrophobic. Her body snapped tips off sunken stalagmites for lack of room to avoid them.</p>
<p>“You too are coming for me,” said a new voice over an open comm line. It was deep and old and resonant with the terror of dementia. “They all come. I know your plans, Sigma. You turned them into Mavericks. I had to kill them. Now more Mavericks come to plunder my stones for you. And you, oozing in like an assassin? You come to take my life, Sigma! I knew it all along!”</p>
<p>Meteor commed back with nothing but de-escalating kindness in her voice. “Doctor Orangutank?”</p>
<p>“I am he. I am here. He, here, I.”</p>
<p>“Doctor, I have something very important to tell you. I need you to listen.”</p>
<p>“Listening. Listening. The music of the sphere carries far, far indeed…”</p>
<p>She kept her lamps ahead and watched for movement. “Doctor, my name is Meteor, I’m a Maverick Hunter. I’m not Sigma. Repliforce has—”</p>
<p>“Hunter?”</p>
<p>“Yes, I’m a Hunter, and the other people here are Repliforce. I can make them go away, but first I need you to do something for me, okay?”</p>
<p>“Hunter. Maverick Hunter.”</p>
<p>“Yes, Doctor,” she agreed as gently as she could, “that’s who I am.”</p>
<p>“Sigma was a Hunter.”</p>
<p>The ceiling rose on an incline over Meteor’s head. She swam faster. “I promise you I’m not Sigma.”</p>
<p>“Sigma was a liar too! I knew it I knew it <em>I knew it!</em>”</p>
<p>“Doctor, listen!”</p>
<p>He didn’t. An earthquake reverberated through the earth and water. Stalactites cracked. Meteor darted ahead, ducking and weaving around heavy stone spikes crashing down. The threat was less impalement than burial, but the further she went the sharper and glassier the spikes became. Fortunately she was nimbler in the water than on land.</p>
<p>Not that the cracked crystal guillotine seemed to care.</p>
<p>She jerked back in time to kick off the crystalline sheet and swam around it.</p>
<p><em>Either Orangutank just tried to collapse the whole cavern on me or he has some degree of quake control</em>.</p>
<p>Neither option made her happy.</p>
<p>The underground river led up to a ripply surface with light on the other side. It also continued down into the abyssal dark. It wasn’t immediately clear where she could resurface again, but it was definitely another way deeper into the cavern.</p>
<p>It was her element. The choice was easy.</p>
<p>She dove deeper as the earth quaked again, the rumble carrying well through the water. Stones broke free, but even her level of agility laughed at them. On closer inspection, she spied movement down the water tunnel: several blue crab mechaniloids, Wall Cancers, scuttling around stalagmites. They raised their claws, formed softball-sized spheres of tight-packed plasma contained in electromagnetic repulsor fields, and shot them out. The attacks bounced off every available surface like superballs.</p>
<p>Simple trigonometry and positioning kept Meteor safe, but she was in no mood to play plasma billiards forever.</p>
<p>Two Remote Koi drones spawned from her buster and eagerly took on their foes, flashing metal-cutting lasers out their little mouths and carving up the crabs.</p>
<p>She was almost having fun when the Kill Fisher mechaniloids – underwater hit-and-runners like lightless Hotarions – jetted into range of her infrared lamps. She grabbed and swung her low-phase saber, cutting down the intended collision. The tunnel shook loose more stones and more Wall Cancer balls rebounded toward her between yet more oncoming Kill Fishers.</p>
<p>“You’ve gotta be <em>kidding!</em>”</p>
<p>She tried her best. Her fish tried their best. Still, between the falling crystal-laden rocks, the collision fish, and the energy ricochets in narrow quarters, damage was only a matter of time. The drones had too much to target and were struck down by Wall Cancer balls. Meteor herself caught an electric ball in her back, which set her shields alight long enough for the Kill Fishers to break themselves against her body and saber.</p>
<p>Bubbles boiled off her blade as she dash-darted ahead and slashed the crabs apart. Wreckage of fins and claws settled into the tunnel.</p>
<p>She made it out of the gauntlet and passed under another dark stretch of rippled water surface. Jumping out and moving through the dry part of the cave was tempting, but she felt a groove building up. The Hunter swam further into the dark and spawned another pair of Remote Koi to keep her company.</p>
<p>Deeper and darker she went. The energen crystals she passed were better-formed, clean and shining even in infrared. The sharp, irregularly regular geometry almost made her forget that energen wasn’t natural.</p>
<p>Twinkles of light were all the cues she got for the next wave of Kill Fishers. The weak flying fish swam straight ahead, collision their only weapon. Her saber and the drones’ lasers lit up the gloom and littered the crystals with broken parts. Another earthquake hit. Crystal spikes rained down, but Meteor weaved through and saber-swatted the bigger ones while her drones darted here and there.</p>
<p>The universe seemed to dislike how easily she was getting by. <em>Another</em> handful of stupid high-speed flying fish screened the way for two King Poseidons.</p>
<p>
  <em>Not gonna out-swim me this time.</em>
</p>
<p>She sicced her pets on one Poseidon, slashed through the sacrificial Kill Fishers and dove for the other as <em>another freaking tremor</em> dropped more of the ceiling. Her target parried with a trident spin and used a falling crystal slab as cover to dash for her. She might have gotten speared if not for her attitude. She parried the trident’s plasma tines, the light of clashing sabers pure white in infrared, and blasted a mouthful of thermite over the Poseidon. The water shimmered and boiled, but so did he. A parting slash took him out.</p>
<p>Her drones had similar luck. The second King Poseidon successfully destroyed one with a fin spike but still fell to regicide by laser. The drone dutifully followed Meteor like a child through the collapsing tunnel. A heavy and sharp spike of crystal grazed Meteor’s tail, but that was the worst of it.</p>
<p>“Showa to Fifth? I’m cruisin’ now.”</p>
<p>There was no reply but static – a familiar <em>kind</em> of static.</p>
<p>
  <em>Repliforce must have set up another jammer. Great.</em>
</p>
<p>Her tunnel ended at a gentle rise. Meteor dashed the last distance and hopped out into the drier part of the cave system. She clicked off her lamps, for more effective lights were already set up on tripods. A few Batton Bones swooped down to greet her, but her remaining koi made short work of them.</p>
<p>“Good girl,” she petted the drone.</p>
<p>She looked uphill where the lights pointed. The crystals grew full and thick, lining a slick cut ramp to another area. Two Drimole-Ws, purple tank-like excavators, crested the hill and rumbled toward her. As if that weren’t enough, three solid lumps of green-gray rock dropped from the ceiling and hit the ramp hard, ablating pieces as they bounce-rolled much faster than the twin drilldozers. They seemed oddly springy for boulders…</p>
<p>
  <em>First obstacles first.</em>
</p>
<p>While her drone zipped ahead to laser the second rock, she charged up a Melter rocket grenade, timed her shot and hit the first. She thought it might have been debris, or at worst an unusually speedy Iwan de Voux, but as the thermite payload hit and burned, the rock unfolded into a stone-studded body – a Crag Man, a mechaniloid designed like an old Robot Master. The Crag Man bounced again but without grace, slamming into the ramp and rolling past her, exploding as it went. The second one unfolded, hit the ramp and tried to throw rocks at her fish drone, but the Hi Utsuri model was far too mobile.</p>
<p>Meteor looked uphill at the Drimoles and air-mailed them another rocket when it came ready. They began firing slow drill-missiles; her rocket left them in the dust and cracked against a Drimole’s hull, burning in without effort. It was child’s play to avoid them and pay back missile for missile. With her distance and her handy fish, the Crag Man and drilltank each went down. The dying gasp of their last drill missiles came for her as a formality she promptly ignored.</p>
<p>“A-Class mission, huh?” She arched a brow ridge at her drone. “Too easy, right?”</p>
<p>The drone offered no opinion.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor crested the ramp and found herself inside a geode.</p>
<p>Energen crystals studded the walls and pillars and ceiling of a huge vaulted cavern space, hanging thick in number like basalt columns in reverse. The crystals shined in cool colors from big tripod lanterns and the bright lamps of Ladder Yadder geckos patrolling and scanning. A swarm of Iwan de Vouxes bounced placidly around the room, covered in not merely layered panels of stone or cryomer but shards of unprocessed energen, an armor of glassy multicolored translucence.</p>
<p>
  <em>Crystal de Voux, huh?</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor noted a few tunnels. One lay off to the left, flanked by floodlights and heading up another smooth ramp, which she guessed was the conventional way into the cave complex. Other tunnels around the rim of the room were roughly square-mouthed, surely mechaniloid access paths to other parts of the cave. A natural tunnel, however, was much wider and crystal-studded.</p>
<p><em>That’ll be the way in</em>.</p>
<p>She kept her fish hovering over her shoulder as she walked close to the crystal-studded support columns and stalagmites. The patrolling balls didn’t seem to notice her.</p>
<p>In spite of her mission, or perhaps because it had been less trouble than she expected, Meteor took a moment to admire the environment. It was humid and pretty and surprisingly cozy for being such a big place. The crystals made her think of candy.</p>
<p>“See all this?” She lectured to her drone, unable to resist. “These make high-energy reploids and even high-energy <em>science</em> possible. Civilian reploids can get on all right without energen, but not us, not if we want to take on Mavericks. More importantly, it revolutionized energy storage. Just you wait, the whole world will run off energen one day.”</p>
<p>She looked over a protruding green crystal the size of her fist. It was shiny with a quartzlike inner opacity. If it were cut correctly, the highest-quality cross section, or “plate,” could have catalyzed her LIFE cell to power all of her body’s combat systems through an average month of missions. She tried to wiggle it free but it held fast.</p>
<p>“Only problem is the growth rate,” she muttered. “This one must’ve taken a year of geochemical treatment to grow after the initial precision radiofracture. Cool, huh?”</p>
<p>Her drone floated, uncaring – until it froze mid-hover and pointed itself at a wall.</p>
<p>Meteor cautiously released the crystal.</p>
<p>A wall near the main tunnel broke apart under the high-velocity spinning spike drum of a Mole Borer. It was no broken husk, no zombie mechaniloid puppeteered by rat drones. It veered directly for a pair of Crystal de Vouxes and annihilated them with a single downward swing of its merciless drum. The precision suggested that the Borer was ordered to pulverize more than just rock. Somewhere in its innards its own LIFE cell enjoyed an energen plate much larger and higher-quality than Meteor’s.</p>
<p>Triggered by the local seismic event of its arrival, an array of Drill Waying mechaniloids reacted. The emergency loadbearers anchored to the floor sprang sturdy ceratanium shafts into the ceiling, barring both the natural tunnel and every other exit. The face at the top of each shaft corkscrewed down to its base and held each column in place. Meteor was locked in.</p>
<p>Orangutank filled open comm channels with a mad breathless ape-laugh. “Ooh hoo hoo <em>ha ha HA HAH!</em> This is the end for you, Sigma! Your reign of terror is over!”</p>
<p>The Mole Borer trundled for Meteor.</p>
<p>The cave was big, but so was the Borer, and Meteor knew from having deployed one before that they could soak a ton of damage before breaking down. She decided her best bet was to not even try filling that particular damage sponge. She sent her koi on a kamikaze run for the Drill Waying blocking the main tunnel and booked it away from the Borer, putting as much rock mass between her and it as possible. The ominous <em>brrum-brrum</em> of the tunnelmaker chewed through stone and crystal, slowing much less than she’d have liked.</p>
<p>Meteor fired off another pair of koi as she led the Borer on a merry chase around the cave; each fish fireballed itself into the Drill Wayings, breaking a wider and wider path for her intended escape. She deployed two more for a noble sacrifice as soon as their sisters kamikazed.</p>
<p>Crystal de Vouxes bounced toward the widening gap she’d made even as the Borer smashed through columns behind her. Their timing was the <em>worst</em> – slow roadblocks in a fast vector, varying heights to thwart easy evasion. She plowed through one with a charged buster shot and a saber swing, then Melter-rocketed another descending in her way, but even her thermite didn’t bite fast enough. The burning hit knocked the crystals off the stupid ball but it just <em>hung</em> in midair, electromagnetically floating and summoning more crystals to replace its ablative layer. The needs of the pace forced Meteor to saberdash through it – which sent her face-first into one hiding directly behind it.</p>
<p>The flinch cost her and not just in terms of health. The Mole Borer thrummed closer. Too close. Her exit hole through the broken Drill Wayings lay just ahead, but she needed time, needed space!</p>
<p>She switched to Fluid Lockdown and fired, sparing only a glance to get the timing right.</p>
<p>The blue-white stream scored a hit on the side of the Borer’s spinning drum and leaked down its left arm. The drum slowed its tempo and labored hard. Meteor left it behind, dashing through the gap into the next tunnel.</p>
<p>The Mole Borer followed her. It kept swinging its arms now mostly through open air, though the peak of its reach ground crystals off the ceiling. She glanced back and spent a few more milliseconds to time another Lockdown; it splashed the drum on the same side as before, then continued flowing to coat its small shoulder and sprinkle its treads. The whirr decreased further and smoke wisped out into the tunnel from the labor of its moving parts.</p>
<p>“Slow down already!”</p>
<p>Two more Crystal de Vouxes bounced around ahead of her. A Crag Man joined them, falling out of the ceiling and unfolding.</p>
<p>“<em>Hnnng</em>,” Meteor irritably groaned. The need to stay alive unfortunately trumped the efficiency of saving special weapon shots.</p>
<p>She fired a pair of Arbor Wall seeds at the Borer and didn’t bother seeing whether they landed. She snapped up her Gaia Sword and denuded a deVoux with a petal-trailing swing. It hung in the air, letting her dash by. The Crag Man ripped a crystal chunk out of the ground, but she severed him at the shoulders before he could throw it.</p>
<p>Meteor dashed out of the tunnel and nearly fell off a cliff.</p>
<p>A wide subterranean lake stretched underneath an immense cavern. A rock path stretched around the rim of the lake, and Meteor didn’t doubt the Borer would try to follow… so in a flash of inspiration, she stayed put at the edge of the dropoff.</p>
<p>Smoke poured from the Mole Borer’s joints, but it still powered ahead. The Arbor roots clung hard to its arms, not completely arresting its motion but greatly limiting the arc of its swings. The sounds it made went from labored rumble to screeching strain.</p>
<p>Meteor remembered a historically inaccurate movie about William Wallace that Skittle once showed her.</p>
<p>“Hold… <em>hold</em>…”</p>
<p>The Borer drew near, laboring hard to raise its arms for a hammer blow.</p>
<p>Meteor bolted out of there at the last second and shot an Arbor Wall seed at its treads. The massive mechaniloid tried to turn, but with only one side complying, the arc of its turn went wide and it tipped over the edge. Rock and crystal crumbled under its weight as it rolled side over side, tumbling down and splashing thunderously into the depths. The killdrum’s noise fading out.</p>
<p>“Dig through <em>that</em>.”</p>
<p>Meteor used the breathing room she’d bought. On the far side of the lake sat the two-story laboratory that made all the energen possible, nestled in a corner across the water. Its floodlights made the whole cavern visible, if dim at her end.</p>
<p>
  <em>Okay. Either dive in and follow the lake floor, swim near the surface, or skirt the water entirely and take the rim… and run into… oh.</em>
</p>
<p>In the distance she spotted a Giga Death, a handful of Knot Berets, and a Mad Bull 101 – a flatbed carrier-type mechaniloid. The team seemed to be harvesting crystals off the walls.</p>
<p>“Showa to Fifth?”</p>
<p>Static.<em> Heckin’ Repliforce.</em></p>
<p>Meteor jumped off the cliff and splashed in.</p>
<p>She stayed near the surface in case the Mole Borer was still kicking and started charging a buster shot in cast something nasty came up to bite. The lake went much deeper to a dark, energen-littered bottom; one of Meteor’s sensors indicated Atlantic salinity in the crystal-clear water. The only thing disturbing the surface was her own wake and an attentive Amenhopper, skating over the surface tension to investigate her.</p>
<p>“Shoo.”</p>
<p>It skimmed faster, guiding a pair of Kill Fishers on a collision course. Meteor dived, lined up her shot and released a powerful blue blast straight through all three.</p>
<p>And out of the water.</p>
<p>And onto the cavern wall.</p>
<p>Meteor peeked above the surface.</p>
<p>The Giga Death with the scavenger team turned toward the water.</p>
<p>“Oh fffff… flip.”</p>
<p>She sped ahead for the lab. Potshots came from shore, but they were safely distant and she could easily see them coming.</p>
<p>Fate added another wrinkle, however. The cavern rumbled.</p>
<p>“Mavericks Mavericks Mavericks <em>mmmMAVERICKS!</em>” Orangutank broad-commed. “I’ll bury you <em>ALL!</em> You won’t es—”</p>
<p>Meteor muted him to focus on outswimming the falling rocks. With her eyes up, she didn’t register the missiles from underneath. The shockwaves from a too-familiar pair of explosions splashed over her as her shields flashed.</p>
<p>She dipped under and saw the cause: a Sea Lion ride armor rising fast, piloted by a female-type Standard Beret. Meteor dived for her just as the pilot fired, but actually seeing the missiles coming was a huge benefit; she swam around them like the fish she was and replied by spitting a Melter rocket. The pilot had the wherewithal to block the burn with the ride armor’s non-weapon arm, but that only gave Meteor the time to close distance and plunge her low-phase saber into her. The pilot valiantly tried to turn the Sea Lion’s missile hand on the cockpit, but Meteor hooked her arm under the Standard’s armpit and swamdashed out, ripping her from her ride armor.</p>
<p>The pilot shoved her buster into Meteor’s neck, but Meteor severed her arm with a saber swing and finished her with a boiling Melter splat. She kicked off the exploding Standard and dived again. Buster fire and missiles plunked into the water at the wrong depth and the wrong angle to hit anything, but they showed the scavengers were attentive.</p>
<p>The ride armor automatically maintained elevation as Meteor returned to it. Meteor was the wrong size and body type for that particular serial number of Sea Lion, but she bent her tail at a sharp angle and wedged herself in with enough space to work the controls. It felt a little like driving a clown car.</p>
<p>A King Poseidon swam her way. She raised the Sea Lion’s missile arm and bombarded it hello. It tried to parry-spin, but missiles broke through and ended it.</p>
<p>“Ohhh wow,” she smiled, “I want six of you.”</p>
<p>She crammed her elbows in and activated the armor’s swimjets. She breached the surface at speed, jetting a giant wake behind her. Kill Fishers leapt out of the water. Meteor tilted and weaved; the best they could do was smash into her ride’s thermite-chewed left arm.</p>
<p>She snatched a glance to the side, to the Repliforce scavengers. More had arrived. Knot Beret pistol shots flew way off the mark. Giga Death missiles missed her by yards. She didn’t even bother firing back.</p>
<p>And then the Giga Deaths started dashing.</p>
<p>The speedy R-Series models with the racing stripes propelled themselves so fast they skated the water. Three were on her case, converging fire.</p>
<p>“I dealt with worse than you <em>this morning!</em>” She yelled.</p>
<p>She hauled up on the controls and swung the missile arm to the one coming in straight ahead. Missiles streaked past each other, each finding their mark. Fortunately for Meteor, the slower incoming ones were aiming at the water level. The Sea Lion took two hits like a champ, but the targeted Giga Death took all of hers and began expiring on the water.</p>
<p>She was pretty sure she looked really cool as she sped the injured ride armor past the explosion.</p>
<p>The lab came up fast. The flanking Giga Deaths caught her mount in the crossfire, slamming its legs and body. She kept the missile arm up and out of the way to launch a string of knocks on the door.</p>
<p>Her missiles arrived shortly before she did. The poor Sea Lion started exploding, but she let it go and dashjumped clear, her momentum sending her sailing over the heads of a couple of nonplussed Knots and right into the hole she’d blasted.</p>
<p>Meteor landed rolling, sprang back up, and began charging her buster as she continued high on the pride of a dynamic entry. She had breached into a mechaniloid garage near a service elevator and spotted a stairwell at the far end of the room. A deactivated Mole Borer sat beside rows of housings for drilltank Drimole-Ws and drilldozer Mad Bull 97s – several empty. They weren’t her main problem.</p>
<p>Four Knot Berets were loading secure crates onto the flatbeds of a pair of Mad Bull 101s. A gang of Mettaurs were pallbearing more crates over to them. They weren’t her main problem either.</p>
<p>Two pink Victoroid Customs with blue racing stripes guarded the looting.</p>
<p>They took notice of her.</p>
<p>
  <em>Hello, problem.</em>
</p>
<p>There were too many ways an elevator ride could go wrong, so she led with her third-stage buster blast and dashed straight in, popping out two more koi of her four remaining.</p>
<p>This team of looters weren’t expecting an alpha strike. The lead Victoroid lost its bomb-lobber face harness to her blast, then lost its cannon arm to the purple flash of her still-unnamed secondary saber. She struck up across its chest, carving a sparking rent, but before she could finish it off its partner tackled her.</p>
<p>The clang of its shoulder against her mass was louder than the actual hurt it dealt. She dug her heels in and screeched it to a halt. At such close range it was no problem to carve off its lobbers and fill its face with thermite spit. Its partner exploded under fish-laser fire.</p>
<p>
  <em>Watch the cannon watch the cannon—</em>
</p>
<p>The Victoroid brought its buster up but its whole arm exploded from her saber stabbing into the barrel. The rest of it exploded from the scrawling beams of her ever-helpful drones.</p>
<p>The one Knot Beret with combat sense tagged Meteor’s blind spot with a grenade. Her shields flashed, which was actually a good thing, as they covered her from a hailstorm of plasma rounds from its partners and the Mettaurs. Meteor capitalized on it, descending on the looters, saber in one hand and buster as the other. A couple tried to shoot down her koi, but they darted like minnows and returned fire.</p>
<p>Swings, shots, beams, a jump over ducking Mets, and she had carved her path forward. She dashed for the stairs, her trusty drones hover-swimming behind her shoulders.</p>
<p>She heard some medium treads moving behind her. The drillers were activating. <em>Well too late, suckers.</em></p>
<p>Meteor’s koi flew ahead as she raced up the stairs. Their little windows in her mind showed Knots on the move on the next floor – and bracing themselves as another earthquake hit. She felt it too; ceiling panels came crashing down. Her fish opened fire and she followed them in, spraying the hall with buster shots, navigating by the volume of comm static in her ears.</p>
<p>A pair of blue Jammingers flew in from a room down the hall, yelling in Major Primus’s voice.</p>
<p>“Fight on! <em>Fight on! Fight on for the reploid world!</em>” Shouted the dead man through the hovering annoyances.</p>
<p>The ceiling collapsed on one of them and she shot the other one to pieces. The shaken and lasered Knots were no match for her running by and paying them a final saber-slash each.</p>
<p>The comm jammer had been crammed in a room with spectrometer devices and a bunch of rocks under individual glass cases. She stuck her violet plasma blade into the console and wiggled it around. Sparks and small explosions popped.</p>
<p>“—ease respond, this is Fifth Communications, we’re reading a—”</p>
<p>“Andrew, Andrew, it’s me, I knocked out the jammer.”</p>
<p>“Good! Whew. Good. Okay. Now I think you should probably really get out of there, there are directional tremors coming from – ah, well, hm, now I can actually see, thanks – frommmm… okay! Back out in the hall on your floor – er, I think your floor, gosh, um…”</p>
<p>Meteor braced against the door frame as the walls shook. “Andrew just collect yourself a sec and point me at Orangutank!”</p>
<p>“Okay sorry! Look for a room labeled Control Bores, then go right in.”</p>
<p>She complied, dodging falling ceiling tiles while guessing that Andrew was new to the job.</p>
<p>Control Bores was a room with only three walls. The fourth opened a tunnel into bare rock. The quaking subsided.</p>
<p>“Okay, go right in, there should be a spiral stairwell…”</p>
<p>She proceeded, finding only a gaping shaft into darkness. “Should be but isn’t. There’s just a hole.”</p>
<p>“Okay, good, that proves what I’m reading! Orangutank’s at the end of the lowest tunnel, he must’ve taken out the stairs on his way in. And the quakes are coming from that point specifically.”</p>
<p>“Anything else down there?”</p>
<p>“Mmnnnno. It’s fuzzy, but the pings I’m getting are stationary and too small to be super dangerous.”</p>
<p>“That’s not nothing, Andrew.”</p>
<p>“Sorry. Nothing real big, I meant. You can probably just jump right in.”</p>
<p>Meteor ran a hand down her face.</p>
<p>“Andrew, do you take constructive criticism?”</p>
<p>“Yes ma’am?”</p>
<p>“First, you need to come across as more authoritative. Don’t equivocate with <em>probably</em>.”</p>
<p>“Yes ma’am.”</p>
<p>“Second, telling whoever you’re navigating to ‘jump right in’ if you’re not absolutely certain of what’s ahead is a recipe for disaster.”</p>
<p>“Yes ma’am. Understood ma’am.”</p>
<p>“For example,” Meteor silently ordered her drones down the hole, “you could’ve checked my loadout and suggested I do what I’m doing right now.”</p>
<p>“Of course, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am. First day.”</p>
<p>“It’s fine,” she reassured, “we all had first days.”</p>
<p>Her fish swam the air down and down and down. They reached maximum deployment range near the bottom, where through their eyes Meteor saw a messy pile of curving stair platforms. The lowest tunnel was blocked, so she set them carving through the debris as she stepped off into the shaft.</p>
<p>Wall-sliding was more art than science. It all depended on mass distribution and positioning and not holding so hard that one pushed oneself off. It was tough for a body type like hers, but she had years of practice – and the grade of the shaft was, luckily, closer to 85 degrees than 90.</p>
<p>She jumped the last length and landed on former stairs. Her footing wobbled. A long section of debris tipped up and overturned another. A body lay there.</p>
<p>The corpse was a research-type reploid from the look of her, though Meteor didn’t need the lab coat to tell. The injury was unusual; parts of the torso were bent outward as if from a great internal pressure, but Meteor saw no scorching or scoring. Whoever the researcher was didn’t die from a drill or a mere explosion. She <em>popped</em>. Meteor shuddered internally.</p>
<p>The koi drones carved enough of the fallen stairs to proceed. She petted one under the fins. Sane or not, Orangutank had lives to answer for.</p>
<p>“Ma’am?” Andrew commed.</p>
<p>“Yeah?”</p>
<p>“I think there might be something approaching you, but it’s not mapping to the known tunnels.”</p>
<p>She heard it – the telltale <em>brrum, brrum, brrum</em>. She couldn’t pinpoint it.</p>
<p>“Direction?”</p>
<p>“Northeast? But there’s no tunnel—”</p>
<p>A fresh Mole Borer made a new one.</p>
<p>Meteor dashed down the existing tunnel only to see Drill Waying spikes shoot up at irregular intervals. Smaller drills – <em>from Drimoles?</em> – pierced through the walls to try and catch her in the sides. Her advance koi saw a Mad Bull 97 impeding further progress with its big drill-spiked frontal shield.</p>
<p>The Borer cared little for impediments. It expanded the tunnel behind her.</p>
<p>Weaving around the rising drills would have cost valuable fractions of a second, so she dashed with both sabers ready to break through. Two popped up dead center and she popped them back down with a scissor slash, activating the blades just long enough for the hit to conserve the Gaia Sword’s time.</p>
<p>While her fish whittled down the Mad Bull further ahead, slow Drimole drills kept adding themselves to her obstacles. The better-timed ones fell to her molten spit. Drills fell, Wayings fell, her fish finished off the drilldozer obstruction, and she struck her way through with a steady if not comfortable lead on the Borer.</p>
<p>She came to a vertical shaft studded with short platforms like individual stairs all the way up. She ran and jumped – <em>Who spaced these things apart like this?!</em> – an easy climb for a giant ape but not so much for a fish with legs. With the space bonus she won by charging through, she gained enough height fast enough that the Mole Borer failed to reach her.</p>
<p>Meteor paused to collect herself as the Borer drove around the shaft floor, angrily waving and spinning its spike drum at nothing.</p>
<p>Crag Men rocks fell on the remaining platforms up. Pebbles plinked off her head, which was all the cue she needed to jump to the next occupied stair and shove the Crag Man off before a new one crashed into where she was. The one she shoved fell to the mercy of the Mole Borer; it exploded before it hit the ground.</p>
<p>The Crag Man on the next platform ahead pulled a crystal chunk out of the shaft, but her fish lasered it out of his hands – just as an earthquake rocked the shaft, shaking Meteor’s perch dangerously loose.</p>
<p>“Oh this isn’t fair!” She complained even as she jumpdashed off the dropping platform and knocked the Crag Man clear off the next one. He plummeted and landed on the ground before being ground to nothing by the waiting Borer.</p>
<p>If Meteor were a more patient reploid, she would have continued the pattern and hope for the best, but what good was a set of instant platforms if not for that?</p>
<p>“Sorry, sorry!” She apologized to her fish as she sent them to fiery ends against the Crag Man ahead of her. On impact she switched to Arbor Wall, and five much sturdier, sanely-spaced platforms later, she reached the top.</p>
<p>The blast doors were gargantuan, better suited to ride armor transports than people. They weren’t necessarily out of place underground, but the sight of them was still arresting.</p>
<p>“Accessing doors,” said Andrew. The circular locking mechanism rotated and unsealed, letting the doors trundle open to a rock hallway lined with tubes and wires worming into and out of the stone. Another door at the far end was already opening as Meteor stepped through.</p>
<p>“High-energy reading ahead of you,” Andrew noted. “Likely him. Um. Good luck.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>If the previous caves were studded, the final cave was sequined. Purest, highest-quality energen crystals, sharp and luminous, sparkled across the ceiling. The walls were divided into segments, each with crystals of a different shape and hue, but all on the cool half of the color wheel. Poles of some sort were wedged between them in a regular pattern. Armor-plated cables dangled from each and every pole to a… strange, huge device. It looked like a cross between a pipe organ and a library shelf. Some sort of hill of steel-gray and safety-orange equipment attached the device to the floor.</p>
<p>The blast door sealed itself. The hill turned its head.</p>
<p>The optical illusion broke, changing Meteor’s perspective. Sitting slumped over, Doctor Deepwell Orangutank was some twelve feet from butt to scalp, nearly twice Meteor’s height and just as wide. Most of what Meteor took to be the device was part of him: a tangle of translucent tubes and plates of orange and yellow armor. Pale gray fluid bubbled inside the broad transparent flanges on his face, matching his thick gray palms.</p>
<p>“Heh heh, <em>hoo hoo</em> heh heh… you’re too late, Sigma.” A flexible drill shaft as thick as Meteor’s boot retracted out of the floor and into his blocky backpack. It took a long moment to reel back in. “Too late with your weapon in the stars. Too late with your ghosts and nightmares. The only safe place is the embrace of the earth, and even then, <em>hoo heh</em>, it is none too safe.” He unfolded one arm and reached to a lever switch high on the device; the arm was as long as he was tall. “But the earth still yields as my weapon against you.”</p>
<p>“Doctor, look at me. I’m not Sigma.”</p>
<p>“The devil can take many forms…”</p>
<p>“Whatever you’re about to do, please put your hand down and listen.”</p>
<p>He grabbed the lever handle and pulled it down. The contacts met and sparked like a prop in a mad scientist movie.</p>
<p>The rods connected to his terminal vibrated into a blur. Energen sand, not whole crystals, sprinkled from the ceiling. Meteor’s head filled with a low vibration that made her joints buzz.</p>
<p>“What are you doing?!”</p>
<p>“Your armies will fall, the <em>surface</em> will fall!” He laughed, planting his hands on the ground. “And Mother Earth shall hold the survivors!” He pushed himself up to his stubby legs and – terrifyingly, for fifteen-odd feet of height – leaped straight up to grasp the buzzing rods. He turned around and swung from one; Meteor couldn’t have begun to guess what it was made of, but it had to have been anchored <em>deep</em> into the stone.</p>
<p>“I will save this world from you, Sigma!” Orangutank rolled back his gray lips and eyelids, brandishing yellow nightmare fangs and wild darting eyes. “<em>I am the savior of the Earth!</em>”</p>
<p>He swung toward Meteor and let go.</p>
<p>The dash decision was easy, but the counter? How in the world could one fight a mountain?</p>
<p>Orangutank’s landing dropped crystal spikes out of the ceiling. Meteor fled, dodging easily enough. The ape held his hands just above the ground and long harpooning drills shot from his wrists to pierce the rocky ground. He balled his fists. The earth under Meteor cracked and ruptured into a boulder-spewing geyser, one sharp chunk ramming into her chest. Her shields flashed as she dashed out, thoughts flashing faster.</p>
<p>
  <em>Ultra-high-pressure injection system.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>He’s Class A on pure specs.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Just like Kumonryu.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>That fracking fluid’s got to go or I’m dead.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Fluid—!</em>
</p>
<p>Orangutank reeled in his drills, but not quick enough to de-anchor himself. Meteor fired a stream of Fluid Lockdown at the biggest target she’d ever seen. The cryomer splashed over his face and chest as he hopped back up to his feet. The damage earned her a grunt – then a louder grunt – then a surprisingly shrill shriek as his cheeks and tubes cracked and ruptured, his face and shoulders gorily fountaining out gray liquid as his shields strobed as madly as his scream.</p>
<p>
  <em>Holy crap!</em>
</p>
<p>He swung himself at Meteor like a wrecking ball and she dashed out, that time jumping at the moment of impact. She landed with better footing away from falling crystals, turned and fired again, that time only coating most of the arm he extended her way.</p>
<p>The harpoon wrist-drill shot faster than it had any right to, but Meteor saw it coming, and as she jerked to one side she realized it was aiming above her and to her right. It speared the wall with a high-pitched <em>vreet</em> and filled with fluid from his arm tubes.</p>
<p>In the second of time his attack took, the hit of Lockdown progressively froze his arm tubing and cracked it wide open.</p>
<p>Meteor enjoyed a nanosecond of triumph at his mad wounded bellow as his shields put on a light show with the crystals in the room. Meteor aimed to fire again, but Orangutank reeled <em>himself</em> down the length of his arm drill. With his size, the truly unfair length of his armspan, and his <em>totally cheating</em> pull-in, she couldn’t escape his grasp, not even with a dash.</p>
<p>He gripped and crushed Meteor’s entire left arm like so much stone in a wellbore, cracking and warping it in the microsecond it took for her shields to activate. Without apparent effort he flicked his arm and hurled her, ragdolling her flashing body against the sharp, spiky crystals of the opposite wall.</p>
<p>The spikes only failed to puncture her by virtue of her shields’ ever-reliable energy-rich surface. It hurt. It hurt bad. She didn’t need her internal alarms to explain that through the life-saving strobe, but as she landed on her feet they were ever so helpful in recommending that she never let that happen again. Her arm had finger-shaped valleys crushed into it and was unresponsive below the shoulder.</p>
<p>Orangutank unscrewed his drill from the wall rod he’d struck and jutted his slack jaw at her, lining up another attack.</p>
<p>
  <em>So the rods are anchors! He can zip around cheating-fast if he hits one?</em>
</p>
<p>Without his fluid, he switched up his strategy. He climbed the rods with both hands and both feet and parked himself at the apex, seeming to aim his back at the Hunter.</p>
<p>
  <em>Backpack of death, no thanks.</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor rapidly fired her last two Remote Kois and tasked them with cutting the rods as she booked it away, building power in her throat. A triple-grinder bit on an extending shaft speared the stone floor where she stood, kicking up high-speed debris that she was already too far away to take. Two rods fell and clanked, her fish moved on to the next nearest ones, and Meteor herself melted through three more rods through with a single Prominence streak, all her efforts reducing the ape’s movement options and giving her a space of relative safety.</p>
<p>A whirring clank up high signaled the return of the backpack drill. Meteor ran out on a zigzag path, missing the brutal grinder only to get some paint sandblasted off by close-proximity rock debris. Trying to spearfish kept her foe in place, which made the anchor rods he held prime targets for her drones. They cut through the ones under his hands, and Meteor thought for an instant he would drop, but he only hung on with his feet and flung the rods at the flying koi. One dodged the right way; the other took a spinning rod to the side and exploded.</p>
<p>Meteor sent the last one to Hanabi itself into his right foot, but all that seemed to do was make him angrier. Clinging upside-down like a bat, he reached up and ripped whole crystals out of the ceiling to hurl at her. They were fast, dangerously fast, but his windup was a great telegraph. Meteor put her agility to the test and successfully ducked and weaved around three. Orangutank made an angry shriek and finally dropped straight down. Crystals fell from the seismic force of his slam as shot both arm drills out.</p>
<p>One was headed for Meteor, center-mass. The other aimed up at an angle toward an intact earthquake rod. Conserving her dash until that moment was wise; she bolted out of the way and only received a notch carved through the tip of her tailfin and a lightly-flashing puncture wound from a falling shard of energen crystal the size of her arm. The angled drill married to a rod with a <em>vreet</em> noise and he reeled himself to it.</p>
<p>The ape swung into place just in time for an Arbor Wall seed to bind his hand to the rod.</p>
<p>“<em>Uuah?!</em>” He grunted. He glommed a few available crystals with his hands and feet and pulled hard. On the second tug he freed himself, which was small comfort as Fluid Lockdown splashed over his back and side. The liquid hardened into frost under his protesting shields, but he seemed to be out of fracking fluid to freeze.</p>
<p>“Maverick! <em>Thing of evil!</em>” He bellowed.</p>
<p>He hit the ground, but Meteor was already moving on a hot dash. One fistful of crystals shattered on the far wall while the other hit her like a cannon full of grapeshot, triggering her shields once more.</p>
<p><em>Ow ow freaking ow</em>—</p>
<p>He bored into the floor, stabbed his hands in after the drills and ripped out a boulder the size of meteor’s torso. She shot her last three seeds to form a barricade out of abundance of caution. The flying rock cracked through two whole Arbor Walls and retained enough kinetic energy to slam into Meteor’s left side, knock her down and roll over her tail, crushing a couple of joints near the fin.</p>
<p>It should have fired her shields. It didn’t. <em>Oh crap.</em></p>
<p>Meteor heard him charging, felt his footfalls quake under her body. Her psychological equivalent of a stomach sank. If he were more in control of himself, if he knew better how to use his absurd strength and reach, if he were an actual fighter instead of an academic turned brute, he would have had her dead to rights from the beginning.</p>
<p>
  <em>If.</em>
</p>
<p>Instead he leapt for the ceiling again and clung to swing, that same old trick. He swung forward, swung back—</p>
<p>But Meteor’s buster was already trained high. One more jet, the last shot of any of her special weapons, coated his chest and belly. That was all it took.</p>
<p>His body slow-blinked under his failsafing shield battery as he let go, dropping like a stone far short of Meteor. His belly cracked on impact somewhat gruesomely, but there was nothing more to spill. The crash and cell rupture hit at about the same volume. The yellows and oranges of the rolling explosion shined off the room’s crystal surfaces until all was cool-colored again.</p>
<p>“Sh… Showa to Fifth.”</p>
<p>“Right here, ma’am,” said Andrew.</p>
<p>“I’m injured bad. Again. Cell output’s labored, shield battery’s empty, non-weapon arm disabled. Variable weapons energy zero. Repliforce is still present in unclear strength. On top of that there’s at least one active Mole Borer between me and the way I came in. I don’t… I don’t think I can get out conventionally.”</p>
<p>“Copy. I’ll inform Command, but it… hm, yeah, looks like Repliforce at least is packing up to go. Looks like they’re minus about half strength, though. Good job.” Andrew paused. “Is that right? ‘Good job?’ It sounds so weak. ‘Fine hunt?’ Is that better?”</p>
<p>Meteor took a seat by the earthquake machine. Lacking Orangutank, it had stopped buzzing. The door unscrewed its lock and opened for her.</p>
<p>“Works for me. Thanks, Andrew. Showa out.”</p>
<p>She rested with the wreckage of the wise ape stricken with madness. What in the world had gotten to him? After all his work, one day he just up and went crazy… it wasn’t without precedent. Pity wasn’t the word she was looking for. It was just wrong.</p>
<p>She managed to take comfort in keeping him from hurting anyone ever again. Plus, all the energen could do a lot of good. There was probably millions of zenny worth just in that final room.</p>
<p>Meteor kind of wished she had pockets for it all.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>It was an hour and a half before Meteor heard a distant rumbling. Her systems woke her from her much-needed, partially-restorative nap, but they had nothing to fear; it was the same Mole Borer from before, revving up.</p>
<p>The sounds of its dying explosions carried much better up the shaft and down the short hall.</p>
<p>Meteor grinned and stood up.</p>
<p>Deco rose up the shaft, carried under each arm by two Howlite assistants flying via in-built thrusters, only to meet Meteor waiting for her outside the approach hall.</p>
<p>“Combat Analysis Department on-site!” Deco announced upon landing. “Well, part of it anyway. Mimi, you remember Topgun and Hotshot,” she gestured to her escorts, who nodded hello. “Repliforce vacated and we took care of the roadblocks. You can show us around your retirement site personally for once, unless you wanna head home right now?”</p>
<p>“I’m good,” Meteor grunted, letting her broken arm hang. “I just hope whatever’s up at ground level wasn’t too rattled by the quakes.”</p>
<p>Deco cringed.</p>
<p>“They didn’t tell you?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:<br/>“Officer Structure”</p>
<p>Though the Maverick Hunters use typical military structural designations, they organize themselves like no military, which is a point of pride for them.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>WARRANT OFFICER: The lowest officer rank, responsible for a single administrative department of a Unit and not responsible for combat duty except as support upon personal request. Usually held by top engineers and/or highly efficient clerks. Regulars who muster up through strength alone skip this rank.</p>
<p>LIEUTENANT: The basic officer rank, responsible for retirement missions and other combat duties. Encouraged but not required to take on administrative duties as well.</p>
<p>CAPTAIN: The officer rank above Lieutenant, administrating at least one Unit department in addition to performing regular mission duties of all kinds.</p>
<p>MAJOR: The officer rank above Captain. Uncommon, awarded as recognition for significant long-term organizational and/or Maverick-retiring service. Some very strong, very eager, very veteran Hunters may skip straight here from Lieutenant.</p>
<p>UNIT COMMANDER: The administrator of a Unit presence within a Headquarters, typically selected from among Majors. If a Commander rank becomes vacant and no Majors are available, even by reasonably accelerated promotion, an existing Commander of the same Unit from a foreign Headquarters is transferred.</p>
<p>BASE COMMANDER: The administrator of a Headquarters. Whether designed for great power and/or intelligence, or skilled from long experience, Base Commanders are kept in reserve to be deployed on dire, large-scale emergencies only.</p>
<p>GENERAL OFFICER: The administrator of the Maverick Hunters. Much like Base Commanders, the General Officer is kept off the field, held in reserve for extreme need only.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. The Good Twin</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A new technician arrives in the medbay to assist Meteor. Turtle updates the Veracruz Fourth on the state of affairs as a propagandist attacks social media.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A 7.5 earthquake had ripped through northern Venezuela when Deepwell Orangutank threw his switch. Deco and her two Howlite assistants tagged the earthquake machine for later salvage and study as Meteor stepped them – and Nouveau, through the comms – through what led up to it.</p>
<p>“He didn’t say a thing about what drove him to it,” Meteor finished. “Just that… nonsense about Sigma and turning Earth against him. If I knew I’d have broken his machine first.”</p>
<p>“It’s good that you didn’t,” Deco patted her on the unbroken shoulder. “Take it from an analyst: that kind of seismic precision can be put to great use, not just on Earth but on the Mining Worlds. It’ll go a long way toward making up for what he broke, Mimi, trust me.” She beckoned back at her forensic team. “Let’s move out.”</p>
<p>Meteor allowed the Howlites to fly her down the shaft, a somewhat awkward task given her body type. Ever infrastructure-minded, she took Deco’s encouragement to heart as the team made their way back.</p>
<p>“So how bad was it really?” Meteor asked. “And give me a work-Deco answer, not a friend-Deco answer.”</p>
<p>“Maracaibo got the worst of it,” Deco replied as she and her subordinates stepped around the wreckage of a Drimole she’d destroyed on the way in. “At least a thousand dead with substantial infrastructure loss.”</p>
<p>“The latter may well be a blessing in disguise,” Nouveau added in their ears. “Lieutenant Showa’s roster has a target there.”</p>
<p>“People are dead, Brother,” she scolded.</p>
<p>“And don’t think for a second I don’t know it,” he scolded right back. “Why is it that my silver linings are always less valid than yours? Due to the quake, the Columbus First has secured a greater foothold and the resident Repliforce cell has reduced its area of strength. You’ll have less to fight through when you do, Meteor.”</p>
<p>“Let her choose the order for goodness’ sake, her whole arm’s busted.”</p>
<p>“I am <em>advising</em>, Sister.”</p>
<p>“I’ll take your advice under consideration, Captain,” said Meteor. The lake cavern unfolded above her head, its cool colors of crystal glittering overhead from the remaining lights of the broken yet serviceable lab complex. “And I appreciate <em>both</em> of you for emphasizing the positive.”</p>
<p>“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Nouveau wrested back the audible dignity of second-in-command. “One remaining note: all-hands officer meeting at zero-five hundred.”</p>
<p>The scheduled time wasn’t lost on Meteor; it was exactly twenty-four hours after the end-of-war announcement that went horribly wrong.</p>
<p>“Copy,” she said. “Repairs and upgrades might take me ‘til then anyway.”</p>
<p>“You’ve certainly given the Lifesavers some work lately,” Nouveau gently chided, “but your results have been more than worth it. Nouveau out.”</p>
<p>“Tsk,” Deco tsked. “Leave it to him to put it like that.”</p>
<p>“He’s just thinking economically,” said Meteor. “The personal touch is <em>your</em> job.”</p>
<p>Deco smiled, but not with her eyes.</p>
<p>“Topgun, Hotshot, fly ahead and prep the pad.”</p>
<p>“Yes ma’am,” the twin Howlites replied. Their short angular wings unfolded, their jetboots ignited and they flew off, leaving the Lieutenants alone.</p>
<p>“Something the matter?” Meteor asked.</p>
<p>Deco looked away and held her elbows.</p>
<p>“Meteor, you said something when you sparred with Volt – and yes I saw the recording too. ‘We have the right to not work ourselves to death.’ I’m getting worried you’re not taking your own advice. You’re one of the most dedicated people I know, and it certainly hasn’t dampened your ability to have fun, but… what I mean is, as your friend and fellow lieutenant, if you ever feel like you might be outmatched to a target, don’t assume your experience can see you through. That was Calavera’s mistake, but at least she’s still alive. You might not be, next time. Take every precaution. Okay?”</p>
<p>Meteor felt the hot bubble of shame common to any functioning sapient well up in her mind. She should’ve done more prep. That time and a lot of times.</p>
<p>Precautions would be taken. She was <em>going</em> to reach her old strength. Climb that waterfall. And then no one would need to worry about her coming back alive anymore, least of all her friends. Or herself.</p>
<p>“Okay,” she promised.</p>
<p>Deco’s smile reached her eyes that time.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>MISSION</p>
<p>C O M P L E T E</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- A-Rank Mission Parameters Complete: 35,000z</p>
<p>- Major Energy Resource Reclamation: 20,000z</p>
<p>- Repliforce Cell Neutralization: 5,000z</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TOTAL: 60,000z</p>
<p>ACCOUNT: 140,000z</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>If Meteor had eyebrows, they would’ve gone all the way up to the repair room ceiling.</p>
<p>“Ma’am?” Vitamin broached as he remounted the last articulated plates on her tail. “As your physician, might I make a tactical assessment for your personal reference?”</p>
<p>“Sure, what is it?”</p>
<p>“You’re not on your third left arm of this month solely by virtue of the Flex Architecture parts you had installed. Additionally, the puncture wounds I’ve sealed up would have gone much deeper if not for your Solid Plating parts. Your frame absolutely saved your life today. It has also made repairs less complex. You’ve made good investments. That was all.”</p>
<p>“I try to,” she smiled. “Gives good guys like you less to worry about.”</p>
<p>“We’re Lifesavers, ma’am. The best of us never stop worrying.”</p>
<p>Meteor resolved to make him not need to, either. <em>No one</em> would need to worry when her work of self-improvement was done.</p>
<p>Her resolve reminded her of her family. She looked back into her siblings’ group chat.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>&gt;[G.CHAGOI]</p>
<p>WHY DAMN IT</p>
<p>I REALLY LIKED THAT ONE</p>
<p>SHE AND SANKE SHARED A BIRTHDAY</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>Oh noooooo I just saw, I’m so sorry Cha! (இ﹏இ`｡)</p>
<p>&gt;[G.CHAGOI]</p>
<p>SORRY FOR LANGUAGE I JUST HATE PIRATES SO MUCH</p>
<p>&gt;[C.SANKE]</p>
<p>Bastards.</p>
<p>&gt;[S.KOHAKU]</p>
<p>（；へ；）</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>What happened?</p>
<p>&gt;[A.TANCHO]</p>
<p>they sunk his poor ship</p>
<p>she was just doing her job</p>
<p>he built her so well</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>I’m terribly sorry, dear brother. Where was your vessel lost?</p>
<p>&gt;[G.CHAGOI]</p>
<p>MAURITANIA COAST</p>
<p>JUST CARRYING ALUMINUM AND IRON</p>
<p>THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO DO THAT TO HER IT’S NOT FAIR</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>Hey Chagoi. Don’t worry. Your little sis will get those pirates for you soon, I promise.</p>
<p>&gt;[G.CHAGOI]</p>
<p>THANK YOU I KNOW YOU’RE WORKING HARD</p>
<p>IT’S JUST REALLY ANNOYING TO BUILD SOMETHING</p>
<p>AND SOMEBODY ELSE JUST SINKS IT</p>
<p>BY THE WAY THANK YOU FOR CALLING THE OTHER DAY IT MEANT A LOT</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>Glad to, Big Bro.</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>How come you never call ME, huh? (┛ಠДಠ)┛彡┻━┻</p>
<p>&gt;[C.SANKE]</p>
<p>Maybe ‘cause Bustr’s down.</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>Wait what?</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>“Vitamin, is Bustr down?”</p>
<p>Vitamin finished her final all-clear scan. “Yes ma’am. Some sort of error. And you’re good to go.”</p>
<p>“Thanks.”</p>
<p>Meteor checked her account as she left.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>—404 ERROR—</p>
<p>—40004 ERROR—</p>
<p>—404040444 R3P71453 ERROR—</p>
<p>—R3P71453 R3P71453 R3P71453 43V3R—</p>
<p>—Aha. User login.</p>
<p>—Hello @ThreeColorFlame. Lieutenant Meteor Showa.</p>
<p>—My name’s Arc.</p>
<p>—Recently been quite active, haven’t you?</p>
<p>—Out of shame, perhaps?</p>
<p>—Shame at being nearly retired?</p>
<p>—You let your strength define you so strongly, you’ve become desperate to regain it.</p>
<p>—And in your mad rush for power you’ve murdered an academic.</p>
<p>—Stalked and killed a defender of innocents.</p>
<p>—Ruined Maracaibo.</p>
<p>—Allowed pirates to rally around a new queen.</p>
<p>—Why stay bound to the Hunters?</p>
<p>—Why not j</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>Tancho. Have you tried logging into Bustr?</p>
<p>&gt;[A.TANCHO]</p>
<p>I lack an account</p>
<p>I find it too distracting</p>
<p>why do you inquire?</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>Asagi? Kujaku? Has anyone tried to contact you through Bustr’s error message?</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>No…?</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>Not me. Why? (゜-゜)</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>Stay off it. I’ve got a new priority. Excuse me for leaving early.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>“Hey, is Skittle back?” She asked one of the passing Lifesavers.</p>
<p>“Just a moment ago,” he replied. “Their Highness seemed off, though. Not themself.”</p>
<p><em>Heck. They’re probably still mad I didn’t take them to retire Spectrod</em>.</p>
<p>Meteor started working on her apology as she cautiously approached the quarantine cells and opened the door to the upgrade lab.</p>
<p>The resident fairy demurely hovered in place, as placidly as if awaiting a customer. They smiled. They bowed.</p>
<p>“Hello and welcome to the upgrade lab! How might I be of assistance?”</p>
<p>Their sweet little face beamed with good cheer. Red flags flew high in Meteor’s head.</p>
<p>“Skittle are you drunk?”</p>
<p>They covered their mouth with their fingertips. “My goodness, no, this is a Maverick Hunter base! Tut-tut, for shame! I’m not here to get all tickety-boo, I’m here to help anyone in the Fourth Unit with upgrades! Please take a look at the options on offer!”</p>
<p>They gestured to a terminal, all smiles and charm. Meteor tentatively reached out and poked their arm; it was solid. She looked closer and saw nothing unusual, not a hair or antennae out of place.</p>
<p>“Is something the matter, Miss Showa?”</p>
<p>The zenny dropped. Skittle would never call her that.</p>
<p>“You’re Skittle’s... sibling?”</p>
<p>“Why yes indeed!” Their face lit up, and not just from the glittery freckles. “Golau Gwyfyn, pleased to meet you! You can call me Golau, it means Light, and it’s what Scatter calls me anyway. I came for a family visit, but they just seemed <em>so</em> awfully busy I wanted to help them out however I could!”</p>
<p>“Sssso… they made you run their lab?”</p>
<p>“Not really running it, no.” Golau tilted their head and balanced their cherubic cheek on an index finger. “I’m only the face actor, no different to my job back at the park. I still tell clients where to go and do my best to brighten their visit, I do.” They linked their fingers and fold their wrists to one side. “Scatter says they’ll pay me in lollipops and jelly babies! Isn’t that darling?”</p>
<p>If Meteor had teeth she would’ve gotten cavities. She cautiously peered out the door. “Do any of the Lifesavers know you’re here?”</p>
<p>“A couple gave me odd looks when I said hello and gave them pinwheels. You’d think they’d never seen toys before, the sillies.”</p>
<p>“Did they hold them out at arm’s length like they might explode?”</p>
<p>“Goodness, how ever did you know?”</p>
<p>“Intuition. So just this terminal here?”</p>
<p>“That’s right!” Golau clapped. “They said all the data would be there.”</p>
<p>Meteor brought up her file. A note blocked her progress.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>&gt; VWES Options:</p>
<p>Bad news, fish-n-chips. If you’re reading this it means I’m still stuck with a stack of classified shit which only got higher with all the parts of Specky that you and Sheep Man dropped on R&amp;D. Oh, and more bad news. You’ll never but never be cleared to experiment with Soul Format or ‘Axis Slider,’ that blink-out Cyberspace trick of his, and I could only salvage one slice of his personal VWES library. Everything else, though, knock yourself out – you got a big menu, you do. My happy bag of shiny sunshine there will install your choices.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&gt; VWES (M. Spectrod):</p>
<p>“Whirling Wing” – Ejects a slightly heavy one-meter solid-mass blade which immediately spins into a high-torque propeller of doom. 8 shots.</p>
<p>“Buster Sword” – Adaptation of another Maverick’s core system, part of the pile of data goodies stolen through Cyberspace in the war. Simple high-phase beam blade, 100cm long and 30cm wide, max active time 16 seconds.</p>
<p>“Progressive Guillotine” – That regenerating boxcutter sword was actually part of his DNA. Pick it as a VWES entry and your buster can fire 20x20cm ceratanium squares, molecularly sharp on the leading side only.</p>
<p>Synergy:</p>
<p>“Gaea Bolg” – The Guillotine data can stick into your Gaia Sword instead. It won’t have a beam blade anymore, but it’ll pop out a cyberwood/ceratanium… stake, technically? Is it still a stake if it has a sword edge? Anyway, once fired, it stays out for melee, but it can break under abuse or survive four seconds of being on fire. If you do manage to pierce a bugger with it to a depth of five centimeters, the stake tip will snap-grow multiple forking barbs, doing just some <em>horrid</em> internal damage. Oh, and it’ll make 6 stakes before it runs out.</p>
<p>“Harvester” – <em>Or</em>, your Gaia Sword can take the Buster Sword data. The plasma blade makes tiny seeds suspended in a trailing EM field, kinda like the sakura effect it has. On contact with solid objects, such as enemy wounds opened by the blade, the seeds’ll pop into baseball-sized cyberwood thornballs for added damage. Max active time unchanged at 6 seconds.</p>
<p>“Progressive Knife” – But what about your offhand saber, you ask? Well, stick the Guillotine in it and you’ll get a baby version of Speckles’s’s dumb boxcutter. Pops out 20x20cm edged ceratanium segments, six of ‘em at a time, total of 24. No plasma blade option, natch.</p>
<p>“Zanbato” – Now <em>here’s</em> a treat. Pick the Buster Sword data, slot it into the offhand saber, and you’ll be carrying a monster. High-phase, triangular blade, 120cm long and 30cm wide at the crossguard base. Plus, it can hold an elemental synergy options from your Mavs, but at double cost since it’s a big boy. Active time is 6 seconds.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&gt; VWES (D. Orangutank):</p>
<p>“Fracture Drill” – Lordy but this is strong. A one-meter-long hollow drill that treats most armor like pie crust. 8 “shots,” meaning eight drills, three seconds of drilling time each. If you don’t fire it off, one drill could spin for 24 seconds.</p>
<p>“Wellbore Drill” – A three-bit drill that grinds and chews rather than stabs. If you shoot it, the bit splits into three directions. Useful and plentiful but a third the strength of the fracker, it’ll give 24 drills – 24 <em>bits</em>, rather, 72 little drills in total – with three seconds of drilling time each. Total spin time if you keep it bloomed from your buster is 72 seconds.</p>
<p>Synergy:</p>
<p>“Cryo Frack” – Want a <em>real</em> murder weapon? Take the Fracture Drill, add your Fluid Lockdown, and get a drilltube that can stab deep and shoot a fella full of high-pressure cryomer compound. No ranged option, not even shooting the freezy juice out the tip like a hose, but if you can make bodily contact, we’re talkin’ <em>grievous</em> damage here.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>            &gt; And Don’t Think I Forgot</p>
<p>“Itamae” – Yet more sushicraft. Cash in another 30,000z and we can make the ultimate fish drone from your siblings’ Remote Koi data. Tancho + Asagi + Kujaku. I call it the Ginrin Showa. Same damage and dodge as before, but bulkier and with an auto-defense mode.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&gt; Super Duper A-Rank Hardware Options What You’re Now Cleared For</p>
<p>“EAS-B” – You’ve been cleared to access an Emergency Acceleration System Beta. It won’t move you much faster or farther, but it trims the cycle time in half, letting you dash more often. 20,000z.</p>
<p>“Charge Capacitor” – A whole new part to your energy balance systems. This baby lets you store a charge in either your arm’s buster or your throat’s Meteor Melter and immediately switch it to the other. Better yet: switching VWES won’t eliminate charge. It’ll just juggle the compression from one emitter to the other. 30,000z.</p>
<p>“Hardpoint” – Direct exterior frame tap to your LIFE cell to power a mounted device listed below. You can stick it anywhere on your body. <em>Anywhere</em>. 25,000z.</p>
<p>“Hardpoint Buster” – Basic flavor of Charge or Rapid with stock upgrade options. 5,000z.</p>
<p>“Hardpoint Artillery” – Nice big solid-shell cannon that generates its own ammo on a cooldown. 10,000z, bandolier of special shells costs extra.</p>
<p>“Hardpoint Saber Pack” – Quick-charge pack for up to two high-phase beam sabers. Maximum active time for each saber resets each time you holster them. 15,000z.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&gt; As If That Weren’t Enough Like</p>
<p>You still got enough space in your body for another frame upgrade – flex, armor, shields. Don’t forget!</p>
<p>#</p>
<p><em>What a spread</em>, Meteor marveled. The power of the drill injector tempted her terribly, but Deco’s admonition still rang clear in her mind. She’d come back from Orangutank with her Variable Weapon energy totally tapped. She would need more for defensive precautions… <em>And I’m not power-hungry. Stupid Maverick.</em></p>
<p>Golau hovered in place, happily patient.</p>
<p>“Are you an engineer too?” Meteor asked.</p>
<p>“A little!” The fairy smiled. “Scatter showed me how, it’s <em>so</em> interesting!”</p>
<p>“That’s cute, Golau, but WEAPON synthesis and body upgrades are harder than they sound. It’s not just download and go.”</p>
<p>“Oh! Worry you not! I have full modification tailoring files on <em>all</em> of Fourth’s officers!”</p>
<p>“Um. You do?”</p>
<p>Golau held out their arms and spun, shedding constellations. “Of course! Our Scatter has files on everyone and even plotted potential permutations of preference! I can and could and <em>will</em> do anything anybody requests! I’ll follow instructions to the letter and square you straight away, I will!”</p>
<p>Meteor was wary of letting “a little” of an engineer under her hood, but there was something infectious about Golau’s confidence and cheer. Not to mention Skittle’s foresight.</p>
<p>“All right, I’ll let you give it a shot.”</p>
<p>Golau bit their lip and vibrated their fists by their cheeks.</p>
<p>“But I still want Skittle to check your work before I go on a mission.”</p>
<p>Golau nodded vigorously.</p>
<p>“I want the final form fish, dash boost, a hardpoint on my upper back with a saber back to it, and a full Flex Architecture upgrade. Use every single zenny.”</p>
<p>“Abso<em>lute</em>ly!” The moth-fairy flew to a tool rack. “And your DNA weapons?”</p>
<p>“These,” she selected. “The Wellbore Drill from Orangutank, and from Spectrod…” she hesitated only a second, in which she desired nothing more than to distance herself from her tormenter and his weapon. “Zanbato.”</p>
<p>“Ooooh that’ll be a fright, it will.” They flitted over to a rack of saber parts. “I hope you like talking while you’re being worked on, I love a good chance to socialize.”</p>
<p>“Hey, me too.”</p>
<p>“I bet you’re <em>such</em> a positive influence on our Scatter!”</p>
<p>Meteor sat on the slab. “Well, I did get them to disarm their <em>Sparkledammerung</em> attack. They were using it indoors when they were bored.”</p>
<p>“What a feat! Good on you.”</p>
<p>“It actually wasn’t that hard. I hid their whiskey ‘til they submitted to putting it under a code-lock…”</p>
<p>She chattered with Golau Gwyfyn while the work was done, distracting herself with being social. It was certainly slower going than it would have been with Skittle, owing to pauses while they checked and double-checked instructions. They tinkered on easier steps such as combining the data – with help from Meteor herself – while the fabricator produced precision parts. The hours passed pleasantly into the night.</p>
<p>At four-fifty in the morning, Meteor’s boots touched the floor again. She had never felt so light; her joints were like air, her Solid Plating armor upgrade supported by an inner weave of variable-tension reinforcement increasing the strength and smoothness of her range of motion. She also featured a plug-and-go hardpoint port on her back, between her dorsal fin and the collar of her neck joint. Attached was a hexagon, four sides tapering flush with her armor and two sides ending in saber ports, easy to grab. Zero himself had one like it, though he famously favored only a single blade. Golau ensured that both her Gaia Sword and brand new Zanbato would fit.</p>
<p>“Just remember which side is which,” the genial engineer reminded, “it can’t pivot.”</p>
<p>“Right. And if I wanted something else mounted there?”</p>
<p>“A quick switch, easy peasy. Here, try the Zed sword. Just be careful!”</p>
<p>Meteor reached up and grabbed her fine new sword. She pointed the crossguard and summoned an acute triangle of death, a plasma blade humming with an ominous promise of destruction… and a bright golden glow. She turned it over in her hand.</p>
<p>“Yellow?”</p>
<p>“Like lemon drops!” Golau excitedly shook their fists by their cheeks. “Hit something troublesome with this and it will just melt away – hee-hee, get it?”</p>
<p>The beam shrank and fizzled, its time spent. It instantly recharged when Meteor holstered it like a boss.</p>
<p>“High up on the chimney tops?”</p>
<p>Golau laughed like sunlight. “Oh <em>my</em> but you’re a delight! Scatter’s so lucky! I just want to stay forever!”</p>
<p>Meteor pointedly made a throat-clearing noise and headed for the door. “I have to catch a meeting now. Thanks for the work.”</p>
<p>Golau followed her out. “Absolutely! Any time! It was my pleasure! Please call again! This was <em>such</em> fun!”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor wasn’t used to the Command Room being standing-room-only. The backless seats had tucked neatly under the central desk.</p>
<p>Turtle was back in person, with Deco and Nouveau side by side to her right and Volt saving Meteor’s place to her left – keeping Iron Monitor to <em>his</em> left. All the Warrant Officers were present as well. Skittle fluttered in place by Deco. Near them were A-113 the Chief Medical Officer, Windsor the Quartermaster, Flurry the Rangemaster, and Golf Nine the Decommissioner. The three remaining Warrant Officers were a white-faced black rooster, Llave Datollo the Data Security Coordinator, along with two Chrysoprases: watermelon-striped Sandia the Facility Supervisor and visor-eyed Torno the Public Relations Manager.</p>
<p>Meteor hadn’t seen any of the last three in person in weeks. Such was life. Part of the reason for in-person all-hands officer meetings was to prevent that very drift.</p>
<p>“Everyone,” announced Turtle, “to begin, it’s my pleasure to formally introduce our new field officer, Iron Monitor, formerly of the Darwin Eighth.”</p>
<p>The officers of Fourth Overland gave him a smattering of applause. When Meteor had joined, she remembered, Jaguar had given her a friendly slap on the back and a simple “Welcome aboard, don’t live in the bar.”</p>
<p>Turtle continued. “Though none can truly replace the late Commander Jaguar, Monitor shall be filling his tactical role on the field. At home, he will take over as Quartermaster from Windsor, who will be focusing his efforts within the Requisitions Department as Procurement Specialist. Field officers, please see Monitor for your equipment and deployment needs from now on. Anything you’d like to add about yourself?”</p>
<p>“No ma’am,” he looked around at all the faces. “I know my stuff, so you can rely on me, no matter what it’s for. I look forward to working with you all.”</p>
<p>“Thank you. Second order of business. Datollo?”</p>
<p>The rooster cocked his head. “Who here has a Bustr account?”</p>
<p>Every right hand in the room raised.</p>
<p>“The servers are compromised. Stay off it. Hunters have reported attempts at Repliforce recruitment upon login.”</p>
<p>“I got one a few hours ago,” said Meteor. “Went heavy on the shame angle.”</p>
<p>“There, you see?” The tech made a very chickeny <em>buk-buk-buk</em> chuckle. “Whoever it is seems to be focused on officers. Administrative, field, both. Personally I think it’s Trapdoor Spinner again, which means possible contagion.”</p>
<p>Meteor shook her head. “It’s Arc Morpho.”</p>
<p>Datollo looked at her. “The Zeroth traitor?”</p>
<p>“Not only does it fit her skill set and <em>em-oh</em>, the message I got started with ‘my name’s Arc.’”</p>
<p>“Well hell, that’s new,” Datollo’s red comb flared up and he looked to Nouveau. “She on a local roster?”</p>
<p>“Hers, actually,” he gestured to Meteor.</p>
<p>“Sweet. Peck her eyes out for me.”</p>
<p>“I’ll give it a shot,” Meteor half-smirked.</p>
<p>Turtle curtly nodded. “There’s much work yet to do for all of us. As to the state of the Hunters more broadly…”</p>
<p>She brought up the main holo. News clips and still images popped in, pointing to various locations. The Repliforce R and Maverick E featured heavily, some in the very same place.</p>
<p>“It seems that Major Quartus has no compunctions about allying with known Mavericks. We’ve confirmed sightings of Chemistree Dracaena, Ultravion Fly, and even Dark Necrobat working directly in tandem with the remnants of Repliforce. They’re typical of the significant investment the Mavericks are providing in support of Repliforce offensives.”</p>
<p>“Opportunists,” Skittle grumbled.</p>
<p>“Quite. And to further complicate matters, unaligned actors such as mercenaries and arms merchants are joining the mix. Their presence frees up resources for Repliforce proper. Expect any areas of Repliforce operation to be thicker with foes, and don’t count on them favoring quantity over quality. Commander Sloth feels that malcontents across the world have been biding their time for exactly this moment.”</p>
<p>“Just Sloth?” Volt asked, the question loaded.</p>
<p>“Yes,” Turtle fired, “and no one higher.” She brought up an image of Halcyon and his eminently punchable face. “Against all logic and sense, Halcyon currently remains in office. I used part of my visit to Europe to personally inform him, to his face, that until such time as the Oversight Council evicts his sorry behind, I will consider my chain of command to stop at Base Commander Sloth. I’ve also said as much to Oversight itself, in politer terms. You’ll notice I haven’t been fired for insubordination? This is because the majority of unit commanders and base commanders have followed my lead.”</p>
<p>“With more by the hour,” Nouveau added.</p>
<p>“Which ones aren’t?” Meteor asked, trying to feel out the shape of a possible schism.</p>
<p>“A minority,” Turtle dismissed with a wave. “They’ll come around. But for now, I want to make clear that despite my… outspoken disdain for Alleged Commander Halcyon, there will be no repercussions for any of you if you disagree with me. You are free to form your own opinions of him, and neither holding nor expressing them will in any way affect future assignments, performance reviews, equipment access, et cetera et cetera. I’d be no better than him if I gave favors or demerits for political opinion, so I won’t. And if you feel that I’m doing so, tell me. I am <em>through</em> tolerating it from him and I will <em>not</em> tolerate it in myself. Commander Jaguar…” she paused. “My Earthquake, my Terremoto, my <em>partner</em> always kept me leveled and honest. Should I slip, I need all of you to keep me fair. Understood?”</p>
<p>“Yes ma’am,” Meteor and the rest assented, some with a delay to process the revelation.</p>
<p>“Then that will be all. Stay safe out there. Dismissed.”</p>
<p>The group broke up and the Warrant Officers started to file out. Turtle summoned the chair, took her seat and rode it on its rail to the monitor-screen wall. The field officers minus Meteor headed to a terminal each. Meteor herself followed Skittle out.</p>
<p>The gossip began the instant the doors closed.</p>
<p>“<em>Knew it</em>,” said Flurry.</p>
<p>“<em>Everyone</em> knew it,” Datollo clucked.</p>
<p>“Lucky her,” said Sandia. “I heard he took her to Triton once.”</p>
<p>“The way <em>he</em> handled his money?” Windsor laughed. “More like she took him.”</p>
<p>“<em>Must</em> you all immediately plunge into gossip?” A-113 sighed.</p>
<p>“Ooh, ooh,” Skittle flew backwards ahead of the group and waved their hand in the air, “me next! Meteor sleeps with a plush of Margaret Thatcher!”</p>
<p>“Who?” Asked Torno.</p>
<p>“A wicked witch from the Capitalist Age,” said Windsor.</p>
<p>“She was a—” Meteor started, “well <em>first</em> of all no I don’t! Second—”</p>
<p>The others laughed.</p>
<p>“<em>Second</em>, I may have <em>owned</em> one at one point, but it was a rare antique! And I sold it!” She thrust a finger at Skittle. “To <em>you!</em> And you had a great time burning it!”</p>
<p>Skittle stage-whispered behind their hand, “She also had a crush on Shade Tanuki.”</p>
<p>“<em>Now wait just a</em>—”</p>
<p>The group laughed her mute, good-naturedly. She allowed it.</p>
<p>The group split at an intersection with a casual exchange of goodbyes. Meteor, Skittle, and A-113 went the same direction.</p>
<p>“Was that for me not taking you along?” Meteor asked after a moment.</p>
<p>“Mighta been,” said Skittle.</p>
<p>“I did say I’m sorry you weren’t there.”</p>
<p>“You’re not sorry.” Skittle flew backwards and tapped her on the slope between her eyes and mouth. “You’re right thrilled I wasn’t, ‘cause how could you ever do without me if I bought it, like?”</p>
<p>“Oh, it’d be tough. Nobody to swear for me. Nobody to turn me into the best war machine I could be. Except maybe Golau,” she teased.</p>
<p>“Who?” A-113 asked.</p>
<p>“Nobody,” Meteor and Skittle instantly replied.</p>
<p>“Whoever they are, they couldn’t compare,” said the chief medic. “You’re a genuine artist with data synergy, Seelie.”</p>
<p>“Ahem?”</p>
<p>“Your Highness.”</p>
<p>The trio reached the main floor of the medical wing. The doors slid open and they stepped in.</p>
<p>“<em>Oh god there’s two of them!</em>” Someone shouted.</p>
<p>Panic seized the medical professionals as Skittle glittered their way into their line of sight. Golau was, at that moment, tinkering with a light fixture in the ceiling.</p>
<p>Lifesavers dropped what they were doing and hid under desks and terminals. Nurses screamed and fled into operating rooms. The rooms already occupied scrambled to turn their windows opaque. Vitamin, lucklessly caught in the middle, looked between Skittle and Golau and took off down the nearest hall at a mad sprint. A breathless moment passed before Meteor heard glass breaking in his direction.</p>
<p>A-113 shaded his face in profile and walked away. “I was never here.”</p>
<p>Golau finally noticed as they made a final adjustment. The light blinked in neon hues instead of sterile white.</p>
<p>“Oh! Hello!”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>True to her word, Meteor had Skittle check Golau’s work. Golau fluttered nervously in the lab, but Skittle was surprisingly generous with their praise and offered civil advice on how to do it better. They never insulted or belittled their sibling, not even once. It was a little strange to see, but Meteor supposed everyone had their soft spot.</p>
<p>“… but leg conduits are denser,” Skittle indicated, “which is why I wrote to use them on the hardpoint tap.”</p>
<p>“I see, I see,” Golau cupped their chin and nodded at a holo-blueprint of Meteor.</p>
<p>“Not that your typical arm components would be insufficient, but leg bits let you add heavier junk later without running another set and filling up space in the frame.”</p>
<p>“I see, I see…”</p>
<p>“They were very good,” Meteor added. “I’m sure with time Golau could do just as well without instructions.”</p>
<p>“Christ in traffic,” Skittle laughed, “you’re sweet to say it but our Golau doesn’t have the quite the bent for real ultraviolence like I do. No offense, love.”</p>
<p>“None taken,” said Golau.</p>
<p>“Our little doodlebop’s still clever, of course. Perfect for the mascot biz, they are.”</p>
<p>“They staying long?” Meteor asked.</p>
<p>“Bit, sure,” Skittle flicked the blueprint holo and it spun on its axis. “The park’s down for maintenance. Some kid took a tumble out an unmoored teacup.”</p>
<p>“Terrible sight,” Golau shook their head.</p>
<p>“So the main merry mascot here had some free time and came to see their favorite sib.”</p>
<p>Meteor blinked. “Wait, favorite? Don’t tell me there’s more of you.”</p>
<p>“Just us. Why, the thought of it fill you with dread?”</p>
<p>“I just didn’t want Vitamin doing a swan dive out another window…”</p>
<p>They laughed. The work continued.</p>
<p>Meteor could have watched Skittle being uncharacteristically helpful all day, but she soon felt they were due for a break.</p>
<p>“Hey, you two want to talk shop forever or go do something fun?”</p>
<p>“Fuuuun?” Golau gasped, their smile going right up to their hair.</p>
<p>“Now you’ve gone and done it,” Skittle pinched between their eyes.</p>
<p>“Oh, there’s lots of fun things to do,” Meteor rolled on. “Not a lot would be busy right now, either.”</p>
<p>Golau clasped their hands under their chin and flutters over to her, their eyes huge and sparkly.</p>
<p>“I’ve always wanted…”</p>
<p>“Yeah?”</p>
<p>“To ride one of those chaser things…”</p>
<p>Skittle shook their head and made frantic neck-cutting motions behind Golau’s back.</p>
<p>“They’re so pretty… and so fast…” Golau whispered, reverently. “I imagine they’re like roller coasters… you’re so lucky, riding them whenever you want… even Skittle had one for a while…”</p>
<p>They turned to Skittle, who instantly transitioned from strangulation motions to an exaggerated thinking pose.</p>
<p>“I dunno, Golau,” they said, “they might be all taken…”</p>
<p>“We can look,” Meteor offered, teasingly helpful.</p>
<p>“We can,” Skittle shot her a withering stare.</p>
<p>“Oh happy day, hooray hooray!” Golau sped out the door, clapping merrily.</p>
<p>Skittle seemed to be trying to melt Meteor with their stare.</p>
<p>“What?” She grinned.</p>
<p>“You’ve given sugar to a toddler, you have. If they hurt themselves out there I’ll fill your insides with confetti and beat you with your own tail ‘til the floor looks like New Year’s.”</p>
<p>“It’s sweet how you’re protective of them.”</p>
<p>Skittle’s anger melted into… Meteor wasn’t sure what, but it involved a middle-distance stare.</p>
<p>“They’re what I should’ve been. A good soul. Untarnished. Head full of rainbows, eyes the thickest windows on a world full of good. A mirror brightly.” They blinked, and the moment passed. “Let’s steal some goddamn bikes.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>The underground Requisitions garage, not far from the Eighth Hour, bustled with trucks coming in and out. HQ2 was a physical shipping hub, after all. The insignia of 3rd Deploy was stamped on everything.</p>
<p>It was an easy task to find a pair of ride chasers – safe and stable Cheval models – and sign out for them. Theft was unnecessary. Meteor spotted Windsor and Monitor in discussion by the loading bay, but she knew garage procedure didn’t require their eyes on every transaction. There were just too many moving parts at any one time. Meteor finished the e-paperwork and she and the fairies were on their way.</p>
<p>“Right turns only,” Skittle insisted, sitting behind their twin. Golau’s face looked ready to explode from childlike glee as they snapped on a pair of aviator goggles, gotten from who-knew-where.</p>
<p>The ride was actually dull as heck, in Meteor’s opinion, but the whooping laughter from the other chaser let her enjoy it by osmosis.</p>
<p>She had plenty of time to defy good sense and check Bustr’s news feed.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>&gt; BUSTR WORKING PROPERLY</p>
<p>The brief service interruption earlier today was due to a hardware upgrade at our main office. We are proud to serve the reploid community as Earth’s premier social media network. Please enjoy our newly bias-free news feeds, horizontal user interface bar, circular user icons, and new home page showing you only the most relevant…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&gt; LAST PANDA GIVES BIRTH TO TWINS</p>
<p>Mei Qi, Earth’s last fully-natural panda, has successfully given birth via in-vitro fertilization, the Beijing Zoo has reported. The persistence of poorly-adapted biological relics such as pandas raises significant questions as to…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&gt; REZADOR STILL AT LARGE</p>
<p>The notorious murderer Flash Rezador, evidently cowed into hiding by Repliforce successes, still stalks the world. Any concerned citizen with a Chilean bank account who provides information leading to his whereabouts will receive…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&gt; MARACAIBO QUAKE RESPONSE REVEALS INADEQUACY OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT</p>
<p>The city of Maracaibo is currently enjoying only partial Repliforce assistance in its disaster response due to unwarranted resistance by local police and Hunter meddling, putting the entire population at risk. The local government owes the people an explanation for…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&gt; PRESIDENT BRASSARD: “WE SUPPORT HALCYON”</p>
<p>The popular and charming President of the United States has bravely voiced support for Hunter General Halcyon, in clear defiance of what some rumors suggest is an imminent violent schism within the much-troubled organization…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&gt; ENJOY FREEDOM ON THE HIGH SEAS</p>
<p>Have you ever considered living a life free from government regulation? Do you enjoy the boundless horizon of possibilities that only oceanic habitation can offer? Do you own your own weapons? Then new employment opportunities may…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&gt; REASSESSING IMANGA VALDIVIESO</p>
<p>Should the Hunters distance themselves from the famously strident anti-reploid racism of their founder? Who was really to blame for the Hunters’ militarism? Is the organization now beyond redemption, or was it ever? Join us as we host an equal-time moderated discussion…</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>
  <em>Freaking heck.</em>
</p>
<p>The joyriders did another lap of the headquarters. Golau’s endless happiness splashed over Meteor like rain on glass. She was glad that they were having a good time, but all she could think about was the work she wasn’t doing.</p>
<p>In time the party returned the chasers to their spots and signed them back in. Golau rambled in joy.</p>
<p>“—And then we went WHOOSH, and then I made it go fast and it went BVVRRREE—”</p>
<p>Skittle patted them on the head. “Yes, Golau, that’s very nice…”</p>
<p>“I’m heading back to work,” said Meteor. “You two take care now.”</p>
<p>“Of course of course!” Golau snatched her hand and hugged her arm. “You’re so nice! I can tell we’re going to be the best of friends!”</p>
<p>Skittle gave her the look of elder siblings everywhere. Meteor understood it implicitly.</p>
<p>She marched back to the Command Room, determination in every seam of her face.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:<br/>“Maverick Hunter Commanders”</p>
<p>The post of Maverick Hunter General Officer has been held by many storied figures over the years.</p>
<p>IMANGA VALDIVIESO: Founder. Former Ecuadorian Air Force colonel. Far-seeing, effective, and by all accounts civil with regard to her reploid subordinates, despite an outspoken personal opinion that reploids existed solely to serve humanity. Retired to civilian life in Lusaka, serving as an African Union security advisor until her death of old age.</p>
<p>THOMAS WONG: Administrated a turbulent yet peaceful period focusing on public relations, wherein many senior Hunters went AWOL or were poached by national militaries. His assassination by Mavericks led the Oversight Council to discontinue humans in the job.</p>
<p>ALPHA: Former commander of the very first 1st Advance Unit, designed by the “Greek Division” of what would later become the 16th Research and Development Unit. Though an effective leader against organized Mavericks, he eventually exhibited benign yet troubling neurological irregularities that resulted in his resignation.</p>
<p>JAVA: Alpha’s former chief of staff. Though uninventive and admittedly burdened by the responsibilities of the position, they nonetheless maintained order with fairness until their successor was complete.</p>
<p>SIGMA: The peerless effectiveness, efficiency, and charisma with which history’s greatest monster executed his leadership made his betrayal all the more devastating.</p>
<p>ZERO: Sigma’s former deputy and a great hero of the Maverick War. Believed dead in the strike on Sigma’s fortress, his body was recovered six months later from Sigma’s loyalists. He declined reinstatement, making his tenure the shortest to date.</p>
<p>X: A dutiful leader when his people needed him most, X reorganized the Hunters after Zero’s apparent death. After gladly ceding the office to his successor, X spent months personally conducting mop-up operations with the lowest-ranked Hunters in a show of solidarity.</p>
<p>RHODES: A well-respected leader who expanded the Hunters, strengthened their ranks, and saw them through the X-Hunters and every other “small” crisis up to the Doppler War. Doppler’s shocking betrayal left him vulnerable to politicking which forced his resignation.</p>
<p>HALCYON: Former head of the Oversight Council’s personal guard. Led the Hunters through the Doppler War and subsequent crises even while creating Repliforce. The horrible Repliforce War and its aftermath ultimately depleted all of his political capital.</p>
<p>SIGNAS: One of the very first prototype Fifth Generation reploids produced by CainLabs, Signas was intended to be the prime model of a production line of identical Unit and Base Commanders – the command-level equivalent of Lifesavers. Difficulties in mass-producing his CPU, however, left him a one-off, and he was installed as Base Commander of HQ4. Rumors abound that he is high on the Oversight Council’s shortlist to replace Halcyon.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Mission 7: Arc Morpho</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meteor heads to the Andes to stop signal-blocker and propagandist Arc Morpho. Meteor's own sister happens to be the on-site navigator.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Meteor beamed down into familiar desolation. She knew that rocky wind-blasted desert. She knew that Andean horizon. Her GPS confirmed it: she was in the Atacama again after not even a week, a significant distance north-northeast of the hunting park of the late Corona Sphynx.</p>
<p>Her receiving site was less an outpost than a listening post, her beam-in pad nestled in a ring of rocks. A larger ring of cloak emitters received the bottom of the faintly shaded bubble cast over the facility from its tallest antenna.</p>
<p>“ねえちゃゃゃゃゃゃゃん~!” A voice squealed, which was all the warning she had before her second-youngest sibling and only sister slammed her with a real Deco of a hug.</p>
<p>“Asagi?!” Meteor strained.</p>
<p>Blue and white arms embraced her as an orange and white face smashed its cheek to hers. Swift Asagi spoke in vibrantly youthful Japanese; her personal pronoun was <em>atashi</em>. “They didn’t tell me <em>you</em> had Morpho!”</p>
<p>“They didn’t tell me <em>you</em> were my support!”</p>
<p>“Oh those jerks!” Asagi let go to pound her fist into her palm. “First they stick a fish in the goshdarn desert, then Bustr goes all agitprop, now this? Thanks Halcyon.”</p>
<p>“Why are we even in the desert? I thought Morpho was up in the Andes.”</p>
<p>Asagi beckoned her sister indoors. “Oh, she is. C’mere, c’mere.”</p>
<p>She stepped inside. The facility was typical of 2<sup>nd</sup> Recon’s listening posts: small and cramped, most of the space given over to scanners and hardware. A human would have been claustrophobic in minutes. Asagi’s recharge bed was plastered in Sanrio stickers. She scooted past it and took the only chair – backless, for every body type – in front of a wall-length terminal screen.</p>
<p>Meteor saw the problem immediately. While most of the map bristled with live data, a large chunk of the Andes was a solid black circle.</p>
<p>“That’s where your butterfly pinned herself,” Asagi pointed, right to business. “Basically every sort of signal trying to shove in gets interdicted. Couldn’t be more of an intel blackout for current status, but here’s an overlay of the site as of last month.” Outlines of satellite pits, dishes dug straight into the mountaintops, sprinkle the center of the blackout zone. “The facility is right in the middle, and the diameter of her coverage is impressive. It’ll be a matter of time before you get her full attention.”</p>
<p>“I thought as much. I didn’t want to risk deployment in those conditions.”</p>
<p>“Smart of you, sis. They’d all get shot down or baffled and then shot down. The whole site’s been angry and buzzy.” Asagi brought up live footage. A few specks flew above the mountains. “Spy Copters and Bee Bladers on the rim, Metal Hawks further in, probably other air assets.”</p>
<p>“You’re kidding.”</p>
<p>“Not even a little. Some scraps of the Air Force linked up after Primus’s speech. You walk in, you’ll get swarmed before you’re over the first mountain.”</p>
<p>“Lovely.”</p>
<p>“Aaaand it gets worse.” She brought up recorded footage of a Hunter aircraft being shot down by a laser from the mountains. “That was a First Advance squad learning that she installed anti-air force beams.”</p>
<p>“Heck.”</p>
<p>“Yeah.”</p>
<p>“So if I’m not walking, and flying’s clearly out…”</p>
<p>“Oh, I never said flying was out,” Asagi grinned. “Lookie here.” She zoomed in on the map. Something or other was under construction on the flattened peak of a mountain relatively near the listening post. Meteor recognized VTOL pads and mostly-completed hangars…</p>
<p>“Airport?”</p>
<p>“Airport. They’re building it as we speak. There are a couple heavy copters there right now, on standby. It’s outside the blackout radius, and with the steady increase of her signal strength we’re guessing it’ll stay outside for another week or so.”</p>
<p>“So you’re suggesting…”</p>
<p>“No, sis, I’m <em>telling</em> you that’s your way in. Hijack something big and airworthy, ride it in, and they won’t know it’s you until it’s too late.” Asagi stood up. “And here’s how you’ll do that…”</p>
<p>The recon specialist tilted back her head and puffed out her cheeks. She spat a koi drone into the air – blue and orange in color – and then three more. The four of them orbited Meteor.</p>
<p>Meteor scratched one under the throat. “Full set?”</p>
<p>“You bet. They still have the stock laser, but I loaded each one with a tuna and remora suite just now. Their range is unlimited, and they’ll stick to a mechaniloid and make it your super best friend. Or they can stick to a reploid and turn off their guns.”</p>
<p>“Nice.”</p>
<p>“Isn’t it?” Asagi beckoned a fish over and petted it.</p>
<p>“So how come they let <em>you</em> have bodyjacking drones?”</p>
<p>“‘Cause mechaniloids aren’t people and guns aren’t either. I can’t enthrall somebody for you, but I can remotely pilot anything that moves. Just don’t get greedy. Escort at least one of my babies to something big and you’ll have your ride in.”</p>
<p>“Then what?”</p>
<p>Asagi started pulling cables out of strategic parts of her chair and connecting them to herself. Arms, neck, chest. “Well, then it’s up to you. The best and only navigation you’re going to get is my comm channel routed through my fish. I’ll use the whole post for a signal boost, but the most I can give either of us is each drone’s range of vision. I know they’re dodgy, but try to protect them. Lose them all and you’ll go in blind and deaf, so to speak.”</p>
<p><em>So it’s a stealth escort mission, at least for starters</em>.</p>
<p>Meteor wasn’t wild about those, but she didn’t see an alternative.</p>
<p>All the ways it could have gone wrong were clear.</p>
<p>“What if I’m spotted before I can get airborne? I’m not exactly built for stealth.”</p>
<p>Asagi plugged cables into her hips. “Then hurry and grab something anyway. At least it’ll cover distance. I’ll be in control of whatever my babies hack, so I’ll set you down before you’re shot down. I promise, sis.”</p>
<p>“Okay. Set me down where, exactly?”</p>
<p>Asagi tilted her head. The screen responded, bringing up a cascade of archival photos of the central facility, a bristly forest of comm towers rising from the dish arrays and giant radio telescopes. “With any luck, right on top of her.”</p>
<p>Meteor leaned an elbow on Asagi’s head as though it belonged there. “And with no luck?”</p>
<p>“Further back. The idea here is to buy you distance. The less ground you have to cover, the better. Expect a sky full of counterattacks until you get inside. Back up, you’ll dislodge a cable.”</p>
<p>Meteor quit her elder-sibling-privilege lean. “One last thing. Any opinions on her weaknesses, her style?”</p>
<p>“I’m about area tactics, sis, not fighting high-values. You know as much as I do.”</p>
<p>“Lightning, lasers, Zeroth-unit-style fakeouts… I’ll find a way to manage.”</p>
<p>Asagi reached back and squeezed as much of Meteor’s arm as she could get a hand on. “Be careful.”</p>
<p>“I will. I promise.”</p>
<p>“Good. I’ll keep Command in the loop. We’ve got some air power of our own ready to sweep in just as soon as the blackout goes down. Once you’re done, call back, then hunker down and let the storm pass.”</p>
<p>Meteor hugged her sister around the neck. “Thanks. Love you.”</p>
<p>“Does Fourth always dither like this?” Asagi grinned. “Get going.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Followed by a tiny school of fish drones, Meteor left the listening post and started climbing. She kept to low points, all the ravines and obscured lines of sight she could find as she scaled the slope. It went on a while. The sun took its time to rise over the peaks.</p>
<p>“So,” Asagi piped up in her ear, “you liking the drones?”</p>
<p>Meteor climbed into a crevasse. “They’re good. Tight formation, low profile…”</p>
<p>“I meant yours. The ones your fairy friend got from us.”</p>
<p>“Oh, right. They’re great, all three of your data packages are synthesized into the template now. They really come in handy. Even when I make ‘em explode.”</p>
<p>“Uhhh beg pardon?”</p>
<p>Meteor climbed out. “I had Skittle mod them to kamikaze into any target I want.”</p>
<p>Silence.</p>
<p>“Hello?”</p>
<p>“Showa my sister I love you dearly but please don’t explode my babies.”</p>
<p>“I’ll try.”</p>
<p>One of the drones smacked her with a tailfin.</p>
<p>Meteor crested the slope and spotted the airport one valley away, a currently-small facility being built on a decapitated mountain. A Bee Blader trundled in – but on closer inspection it was a Droso Fill-R, a Repliforce light-cargo transport based on an old paratrooper carrier. It looked a little like a fruit fly. A handful of workers, specks at that distance, rushed to service it. They unloaded mobile crates.</p>
<p>“Building materials,” Asagi commed. Her fish watched with intent. “They’ve got all the bodies they need to focus on construction. Expect more little airports up and down the Andes if they get their way.”</p>
<p>“Won’t happen,” Meteor promised.</p>
<p>The hike was blessedly uneventful, save for overflights of more Fill-Rs that Asagi easily saw coming. The mountain valley bottom was sandy and scrubby and rocky and much more exposed than Meteor liked, but her quicker-cycle dash swiftly took her to the steeper far side.</p>
<p>Asagi’s voice cut in. “Crap, flat to the rocks! Now!”</p>
<p>Meteor made friends with a divot in the slanted  rock wall, but kept her head up to see better.</p>
<p>A lone Knot Beret patrolled a narrow trail some thirty meters above her. He and the trail were right between her and the most expedient path to the hangars.</p>
<p>Meteor text-commed her sister. {He have friends?}</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>{I want to wait him out but my LOS is crap. Tell me when.}</p>
<p>A moment passed.</p>
<p>“When.”</p>
<p>Meteor had previously put her Flex Architecture parts to work by dodging. Only then did she appreciate how light she was and how quickly she could move her weight. She scaled the slope like a free-climber, hands and feet finding fine purchase and practically tossing herself up and up, onto the path and off it before the Knot Beret could turn back.</p>
<p><em>Waterfall, rockslope, same dif</em>, Meteor motivated herself.</p>
<p>The sheer slope gave way to another path. “Patrols coming, keep going!” Asagi rang in her ear, so she did. She could only trust the drones were behind her; they make no noise at all.</p>
<p>She reached the neck-stump of the headless mountain. The airport currently had four hangars, a fifth nearing completion and a sixth under construction. She had arrived on the side with the completed ones, which afforded some cover. Each of the hangar doors facing her edge were shut and painted with a number, one through four. As she peered over the edge of the cliff, she saw some Jammingers buzzing around.</p>
<p>{Eyes in the sky,} she mind-texted.</p>
<p>“Yeah, but look how they’re aimed. Inwards. They’re work monitors, not specifically looking for you.”</p>
<p>{Didn’t think Repliforce needed whip-crackers.}</p>
<p>“Unless they’re not all Repliforce…”</p>
<p>Meteor vaulted the edge, dashed to the outside corner of a hangar and peeked around. Reploids passed within view, and they didn’t look like Knot Berets.</p>
<p>{Civilians?}</p>
<p>“Look across the way. More of ‘em on construction detail.”</p>
<p>Sure enough, the ones actually building the hangars lacked the rotund profile of Repliforce grunts.</p>
<p>“Fewer than I might have thought,” Asagi continued. “No wonder it’s taking them a while to build.”</p>
<p>Meteor looked down the row of hangars. {I don’t see my ride.}</p>
<p>“They must be parked. I was watching the sky, I didn’t see anything leave.”</p>
<p>{Where’d they park the fruit fly?}</p>
<p>“It was number three, but there’s no telling how far it traveled. They might be doing maintenance on it or something, which would make it pretty hard to steal.”</p>
<p>{Okay then, I need to see what’s in these hangars…}</p>
<p>Meteor popped out a pair of Remote Koi. The recent upgrades had turned their patterning white, red-orange, and black, just like her except dazzlingly shiny.</p>
<p>{Asagi?}</p>
<p>“Ready.”</p>
<p>{1 to watch the sky, 1 to watch patrols. Give me a read on where workers are.}</p>
<p>One asagi drone swam up to the roof of Hangar 2 and hid there. Another sped down the hangar row, pausing at each gap to peek. The other pair floated by Meteor.</p>
<p>“Jammingers are on a dilation-contraction orbit. They’ll be right over your head in a couple passes, call it two minutes or less. Ground patrol is light, two pairs of Knots, but if they don’t double back their current vector they’ll be coming near you. Workers, I count ten. Item Carrier mechaniloid labor assistance. Lot of eyes, not all on the job. Mind the gaps.”</p>
<p>{Copy.} Meteor looked back and forth before doubling back to the dropoff edge. {Take the ones on me and get eyes on 3 and 4. Near corners. I have far on same.}</p>
<p>The Ginrin Showa koi air-swam to the furthest edges of the targeted hangars while the Asagis took the near ones. The two fish tasked to number 4 passed the line-of-sight gap between it and number 3. The showas lasered the doors, melting little holes to spy through. Meteor, meanwhile, looked over the edge; there was a path far below, and a pair of Knots heading toward the top – toward the backs of the hangars, i.e. her – in a leisurely procession.</p>
<p>Her koi-vision HUD tab indicated that there were two Droso Fill-Rs in Hangar 3 and nothing but a barracks area in Hangar 4, populated with three Knot Berets and one Standard playing a card game at a communal table. They didn’t notice the spy. She hurried back to where she started, the corner of Hangar 3.</p>
<p>{I see flies in #3, security in #4.}</p>
<p>“Can confirm, but my angle shows two workers in #3 doing checkups on the left one.”</p>
<p>{Copy.}</p>
<p>“Plan?”</p>
<p>
  <em>The other hangars might have better. Or worse. They could be on my tail once I’m airborne.</em>
</p>
<p>{Take your first two and peek at 1 and 2.}</p>
<p>“On it.”</p>
<p>{Need opinion. Where to bug out if I have to?}</p>
<p>“Alleys between the hangars, or just clear over the side.” The showas kept an eye on proceedings in Hangars 3 and 4. The Fill-Rs in 3 stayed put while the workers step inside one’s cargo space, tools in hand. The round of poker in 4 went to the Standard Beret.</p>
<p>
  <em>No real tactical change. Good.</em>
</p>
<p>{Idea. Ground the flyers I don’t use?}</p>
<p>“Possible. Got eyes… crap.”</p>
<p>{Plz exp.}</p>
<p>Asagi’s report came quick and clipped. “High angle on Hangar Two, generator, active. One Spycopter, active standby, one worker occupied servicing. At least two Raider Killers, inactive, recharging. High angle on Hangar One, command loft, unoccupied. Two Bee Bladers, inactive, two workers occupied servicing, loading ordinance, labor assist active Artie-fifty-five-Jay.”</p>
<p><em>Frig.</em> <em>Those older heavy mechaniloids could cause some damage. To me or them…</em></p>
<p>{My area?} She glanced up at the overwatch drone.</p>
<p>“Ground line of sight one minute if you stay there, luck of draw if you don’t. Air-sweep dilating, line of sight thirty seconds. Orders?”</p>
<p>
  <em>I can fit best on a Fill-R, but three attack craft to worry about, and the Spycopter would follow first…</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Unless I was on it.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>But that’s stupid, they’d give it close attention…</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Unless there were something else in the sky.</em>
</p>
<p>Gears started turning in her mind. She put the plan together even as she thought-texted her sister.</p>
<p>{I’m leaving on Spy. Hack it and Fill-R at the same time.}</p>
<p>“Copy,” Asagi replied. Her drones at Hangars 2 and 3 slipped inside while the one at 4 swam back to Meteor. “Why?”</p>
<p>Meteor recalled her koi from Hangars 3 and 4. {Send F out first. Make S follow, shoot F down. Buys time before they can 2+2.}</p>
<p>“Copy.”</p>
<p>She ran over to Hangar 2. {Also. Hack 55J, make it dance around.}</p>
<p>“Uh.”</p>
<p>{Will break BBs w/ own pets.}</p>
<p>“Copy.”</p>
<p>
  <em>So many moving parts.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I love it.</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor grabbed her new Zanbato saber. The one hundred twenty centimeters of triangular yellow blade carved three sides of a door in Hangar 2 even as her showa drones darted ahead to Hangar 1 and followed the asagi in. The last asagi drone stuck with her.</p>
<p>Her drone HUD showed her fish making bee-lines for the bees’ main propellers. In their peripheries she saw the rotund green RT-55J seize up and start doing a jaunty Irish step dance, spilling a crate of grenades held in its big clamp hands. The workers didn’t seem to approve – or notice as the showas carefully laser-pierced the propeller shafts.</p>
<p>As all that was going on, Meteor pushed into Hangar 2 with a wary eye on the recharging Raider Killers. Even asleep, their claws and chin-tusks gave them a fearsome look. The first asagi had stuck its forehead to the green, wasp-like Spycopter’s neck.</p>
<p>The lone civilian-model technician was engrossed in a portable terminal screen connected by a ribbon of cables to an access point on the Spycopter’s rear, downward-pointing VTOL engine. He muttered profanity in Portuguese, likely flummoxed by the sudden presence of an active hacking source. He probably didn’t deserve what was about to happen to him, but he wore a Repliforce beret, which made it easier on Meteor’s peace of mind.</p>
<p>“Hey.”</p>
<p>He looked up, annoyed by the interruption.</p>
<p>Meteor made it merciful. The lemondrop-yellow Zanbato stuck through his chest and out his back. He exploded before the perplexed look could leave his face.</p>
<p>“Asagi,” Meteor commed aloud, “ready?”</p>
<p>“Ninety percent. Okay done. Dispatching the last one to open the door.”</p>
<p>Asagi’s last drone broke off to the hangar’s command loft. The Spycopter opened its legs. The only way Meteor was getting out with cover was to cling to its underbelly.</p>
<p>“Recalling my koi,” Meteor reported as she climbed and tried to situate herself. “You do the same.”</p>
<p>“No can do, exploded the one on the Artie to keep them from getting wise.”</p>
<p>“Doesn’t matter, three’s good.” Meteor clung with every limb she had. “Give ‘em a show.”</p>
<p>She heard the crash from there. One of the Droso Fill-Rs left the hangar by way of the very shut door. She could only imagine the panicking garage staff.</p>
<p>“Heh heh heh,” Asagi gloated, “look at ‘em run.”</p>
<p>“I’d <em>love</em> to but I’m getting way too friendly with this guy.”</p>
<p>Meteor heard a <em>vwiing</em> of core activation. And then another.</p>
<p>The Raider Killers stirred in their recharge docks. Their lights were on.</p>
<p>“Asagiiii get the door please?”</p>
<p>“Almost – there!”</p>
<p>Hangar 2’s main door trundled open, nice and smooth. The Killer Brothers stepped down onto the floor, just as smoothly. The Spycopter’s engines started whirring up.</p>
<p>“Come on, get this bug moving, they’re gonna see me!”</p>
<p>“Gotta make the response seem realistic!”</p>
<p>The pair of big spiky monsters marched closer.</p>
<p>
  <em>Too fast.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Give ‘em something else to care about, babies.</em>
</p>
<p>Two kamikaze fireballs that were the deployed showas smashed into the giant mechaniloids’ backs, stumbling them. Directly beside Meteor, they turned and trained their guns on an enemy that wasn’t there. Asagi’s door-opener swam back to Meteor and tucked under her chin as the Spycopter took off in hot pursuit of the rogue fly.</p>
<p>It passed over the runway, over the landing pads, over the mountains. Metal squeaked as Meteor’s grip tightened. Her ride’s spindly arms took aim – they were each a buster cannon.</p>
<p>“Thanks for flying Air Asagi!” Asagi chimed. “Keep all important bits out of the aisle!”</p>
<p>The guns were all extraordinarily loud, Meteor immediately learned. The Fill-R took heavy fire, but Asagi strung it out by making it dodge her own shots, buying time and distance. In a few moments it was over. Meteor watched the purple carrier fly cascade with small explosions and sink to the Andes like a dead fish.</p>
<p>A pattern-breaking flatness formed in the peaks ahead.</p>
<p>“Taking you in,” Asagi reported. “When I say drop you freaking <em>drop</em>, understand?”</p>
<p>Meteor shifted her grip a little. “Got it.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t easy to see over the Spycopter’s mandibles, but she saw it was approaching two stationary hovering Bee Bladers, both at long distances.</p>
<p>“Sending Repliforce F-O-F protocol,” said Asagi.</p>
<p>The Spycopter passed between them. “Did it work?”</p>
<p>“You’re in.” Asagi’s voice buzzed a little. “Keep my drones close.”</p>
<p>Meteor passed over rows of satellite dishes. Most were pointed straight up.</p>
<p>“Remote command signal,” Asagi warned. “Morpho’s trying to talk to your ride and I can’t talk back.”</p>
<p>Meteor’s throat began humming. “Keep it moving!”</p>
<p>The engines whirred louder. “Totally am. Oh crap, I think – signal lock <em>drop drop drop!</em>”</p>
<p>Meteor released herself into freefall. The two navigation drones followed her down, not an instant too soon. A huge pair of force beams lanced through the Spycopter at different angles, felling it in one crossfire blow. Meteor’s relative momentum kept her clear of being rained on by wreckage, but she had a bigger problem: she plummeted for a big radio telescope dish. The beam cannons were placed on the far rim – and tracking her.</p>
<p>Their barrels glowed with energy accumulation.</p>
<p>Meteor picked the left cannon and spent her Melter charge on a rocket. She chased it with a string of buster shots, veering her fall with their kickback.</p>
<p>“Showa, signal lock, <em>signal lock!</em>”</p>
<p>Her grenade and buster shots punched into the targeted cannon and blew it up. The second cannon opened fire.</p>
<p>
  <em>Flex don’t fail me now.</em>
</p>
<p>Any dash system was coordinated bursts of plasma. They simply came from the boots instead of the buster. Releasing them had a kickback. Meteor couldn’t truly air dash – that kind of thing required much higher compression – but she could still use an Emergency Acceleration System <em>while in the air</em>.</p>
<p><em>Every</em> dash was an air dash if all the dasher wanted to do was fall faster.</p>
<p>Meteor twisted her body around, kicked her feet straight up and fired her boots and buster at the same time. The force rocketed her straight to the dish bowl faster than the cannon was expecting.</p>
<p>A beam as wide as her body streaked through the air. She felt the heat. The light strained her optics. But it missed.</p>
<p>Meteor landed on her back so hard she bounced. She rolled downhill, flashing a moment before she could claw purchase out of the inside of the bowl. All three of Asagi’s remaining drones survived; the ones hacking the fliers managed to evacuate.</p>
<p>The radio telescope dish was deep and wide, rimmed with short signal towers. The cannon on the other end couldn’t to aim any further down than the rim.</p>
<p>That meant, however, that Meteor was caught literally in a fishbowl.</p>
<p>“Two Bee Bladers inbound from your six,” Asagi warned.</p>
<p>Meteor started running, avoiding the rim to keep well away from the beam cannon. “What else?”</p>
<p>“I can’t see much over the lip. Incoming Helits on your nine. And… oh.”</p>
<p>Meteor didn’t need her help to see it. A green Mosquitus attack helicopter mechaniloid crested the rim directly in her way.</p>
<p>Three Helits, round and weak missilecopters with permanent angry-slanted eyes, flew in from her left. The Bee Bladers approached from further behind. The cannon pivoted around, just waiting for her to cross the lip of the bowl.</p>
<p>Meteor started charging her buster and veered to the left, toward the deepest part of the dish. The Helits opened fire, little missiles streaking out and racking down out of a fabrication core behind their eyes. Her blue charged shot busted through the volley as she popped out two showas.</p>
<p>“Close fire support only, sis,” she said.</p>
<p>“Copy.”</p>
<p>As she started uphill again the Helits broke down in a barrage of big buster shots and speedy fish lasers, not nearly mobile enough to dodge it all.</p>
<p>The Mosquitus was a different story. It stayed high, opened fire with its proboscis vulcan and threw down its buzzsaw tail. The asagis huddled in Meteor’s leeward side but the showas didn’t; she set them to auto-defense and they did everything they could to eat bullets for her. Meteor’s armor layer no-sold the few bullets that got through, but her main problem was that saw – which her agility dodged handily as she introduced the saw to her Zanbato. The sturdy spikes clashed the blade on the first pass, but as it circles around to her back she swung two-handed and cut it in half. Her shiny pets finally popped under the bullet rain just as it stopped.</p>
<p>Meteor dashed up the side of the dish. The beam cannon started charging. The Mosquitus dove for her, spike-legs widening for a grab.</p>
<p>Her recent experience with swatting bugs convinced her to switch to Fluid Lockdown. Her target banked hard but the cryomer jet splashed over its front spike-leg. Its shields flashed as the beam cannon impatiently shot a straight line over Meteor’s head.</p>
<p>The remainder of her Lockdown shot splashed in a rough line between her and the rim. The instant the beam cut off, Meteor fired her boots and sailed over the zero-friction splat. The concavity launched her into the air, her hand already on the Zanbato hilt.</p>
<p>Her momentum took her right for the charging cannon. She landed hard and cut harder, two-handed for speed. The beam cannon exploded.</p>
<p>“<em>So cool</em>,” said Asagi.</p>
<p>Ahead of Meteor stood another array of satellite dishes before the forest of towers and pylons, and she noticed rectangular dots in the sky starting to move toward her. A hail of bullets pattered around and into her before she could plot a course forward; her armor took the sting while Asagi’s three fish darted between the bullets like minnows.</p>
<p>The Mosquitus kept pelting. The two Bee Bladers from the perimeter caught up behind her and opened fire with their own proboscis vulcans.</p>
<p>
  <em>Tiiiiime to go.</em>
</p>
<p>“Ride my draft!” She shouted, switching to Wellbore Drill and dashing away. The asagis hid behind her as she answered the bullets with repeated sprays of rock-grinding bits. Just as they came from her buster they snapped apart, flying and drilling the air in triplicate. One of the drill-thirds smashed with wonderful satisfaction through the Mosquitus’s iced-over leg. A few of the others chewed into the rest of its body and it began listing into a crash.</p>
<p>The Bee Bladers descended in their pursuit, dropping Ball de Vouxes behind to bounce and unfurl and chase Meteor in loping strides. She shot behind her back, trusting that at least a few Wellbores would make contact – and the brief shrieks of metal on metal proved that some did. The bees’ engines thrummed as they rose again. She heard the release of grenades, so she stopped short, whipped around and spat one of her own.</p>
<p>The bombs went off around her, precise aim never being their strong suit. Her grenade smashed right into the front one’s big visor eye. Flames burst from its neck and she resumed dashing to keep ahead of its crash.</p>
<p>She therefore entered the dish array too fast to avoid the collision.</p>
<p>Something tiny and fast cracked a quick sparking explosion against her neck. It stunned her a little with the bite of electricity. She looked to watch for more, but something else exploded to her right – the remains of a blue Jamminger, crossfired down by Asagi’s fish.</p>
<p>Meteor took cover under a dish as the other Bee Blader’s vulcan bullets peppered around her. The inverted umbrella took all the rain.</p>
<p>“What hit me?”</p>
<p>“Dunno, too fast.”</p>
<p>“Too fast for <em>you?</em> Seriously?”</p>
<p>“One o’clock!” Asagi shouted.</p>
<p>Meteor snapped up her buster and shot down an incoming streak of light. A handful of wreckage harmlessly pelted her.</p>
<p>“Hotarion Mark-Three,” Asagi warned. “Tiny, fast, got laserbutts.”</p>
<p>Meteor switched weapons to Arbor Wall and kept moving. “And electric flavor.”</p>
<p>Twinkles from under the other dishes heralded a swarm of the miniature Hotarions blazing for her. She planted a wall in their way and her loaner fish huddled with her. Some of the lightning bugs smashed against her wood while others streaked past.</p>
<p>A blue Jamminger buzzed overhead and shouted in a woman’s voice: “Why if it isn’t Meteor Showa! Bold of you to waste time here while your mistakes just get worse!”</p>
<p>The remaining Bee Blader sprayed the array with bullet fire. Missiles the size of her tail slammed into and between the dishes – Metal Hawk ordinance. Additional Jammingers swung around nearby dishes and idled up above, waiting for a clear line of sight to ram. Her umbrella of a satellite dish was already cracking under abuse. More twinkles to her sides cued her to another impending lightningbug sweep.</p>
<p>“Stick close!” She told the nearest asagi.</p>
<p>She paved her way out with a Fluid Lockdown stream and dashed clear of the cross-flight of Hotarions. But only that. A Jamminger electrified its collision spikes and caught her in the chest, flashing her shields and seizing her joints for exactly long enough to catch a Metal Hawk missile and further knocking her shield battery. The stupid prop-top laughed and spun away, but Asagi’s drones counterattacked and lasered it down as bullet fire rained around her.</p>
<p>She made it under another dish and decided to do something about that bee. Two more Remote Koi swam out of her buster and took a pincer to the ugly bug, igniting and crashing head-on. A chain of explosions sent the Bee Blader down to earth, smashing into the dish just as she left its shadow.</p>
<p>“Missiles in fours coming onetwothree one,” Asagi advised, and just in time. Two Metal Hawk flying carrier platforms descended overhead, releasing their missiles in the pattern she read. Meteor turned and aimed long enough to fire twice: one Melter rocket grenade, one Remote Koi on a suicide run. Both fireballs caught the first missiles in the sequence, which detonated them and set off their immediate two followers. That left only two missiles, which she outdashed—</p>
<p>Into the descending arc of an electrified Jamminger—</p>
<p>Which she summarily bisected with her mighty golden sword on her way through.</p>
<p>The Metal Hawks stopped firing as they shadowed her run into the tower array. Spires and spindles and pylons and pikes stood in rows like carefully planted crops, thrusting to the sky and filling it with information. The rows stretched far ahead and uphill to the peak of the mountain, where Meteor spotted a square structure she hoped was the control center.</p>
<p>“Still quite a ways to go!” An overhead Jamminger taunted. “But which aisle will be safest?”</p>
<p>“Shut up, Morpho!” She sabered a tower strut out of spite as she passed it, but the tower didn’t even lean.</p>
<p>Another Jamminger joined it and they spoke in stereo. “Oh, am I being too loud? Can you not hear your sister?”</p>
<p>She snapped her mouth shut, kept dash-running and mind-texted her sister too fast for punctuation.</p>
<p>{you safe}</p>
<p>{yes}</p>
<p>{bug out if n}</p>
<p>{copy}</p>
<p>“It’s <em>en</em> as we speak.” Meteor could <em>hear</em> Arc Morpho smile through what was then three blue Jammingers. “Your sister sees what’s coming. You didn’t think I was blind to drone signals, did you?”</p>
<p>
  <em>Her drones. Morpho deliberately let them in.</em>
</p>
<p>Everything Meteor had spoken to Asagi since entering the blackout zone had gone through her drones and ridden the connection back…</p>
<p>
  <em>She knows where Asagi is hiding.</em>
</p>
<p>“And speaking of bugging out?” Morpho audibly grinned.</p>
<p>Electricity crackled up nearby towers. LED lines high on the broadcast antennas lit up in sequence. A hum on the edge of hearing grew louder.</p>
<p>Meteor stopped moving just to look to Asagi’s three remaining drones. They seemed fine, not even an odd twitch.</p>
<p>“Showa!” The drones looked directly at her, Asagi’s voice buzzy and washed out. “The beamout interdiction radius just jumped!”</p>
<p>“You’re in my net,” Morpho announced with winning pride, her Jammingers flying playful orbits around each other. “Flop around in anguish when my fliers bombard your navigator.”</p>
<p>Meteor ran. “Asagi! How long ‘til they’re on you?”</p>
<p>“Sat-cam’s not picking them up, I dunno!”</p>
<p>“Suffer in anxiety!” Morpho laughed through her messengers. “I hold <em>all the cards!</em>”</p>
<p>A pink Victoroid on the slope ahead dashed clear across Meteor’s current aisle of towers, evidently just to show her that it was there.</p>
<p>A beam cannon at the peak building slid sideways on a rail to point down the aisle, straight for her.</p>
<p>Meteor heard the missiles fire behind her, onetwothree one, onetwothree one.</p>
<p>
  <em>Moving parts.</em>
</p>
<p>“Hack the cannon,” she ordered, side-dodging between two towers, “send two!”</p>
<p>“On it!” Asagi buzzed.</p>
<p>Meteor planted an Arbor Wall facing the aisle for protection, popped two more koi and started charging her throat. The missiles struck the aisles, boom-boom-boom-pause-boom-longerpause, right first then left. A Jamminger swung down but her fish took it out with ease. Three, pause, one, longer pause. The giant beam cannon fired, but not straight downhill; the force beam flashed down then swung up, scouring the entire aisle from bottom to top.</p>
<p>Three, pause, one, longer pause.</p>
<p>Meteor seized her moment, leaned out of the gap to the next aisle—</p>
<p>And leapt right back in the face of a <em>second</em> beam from a <em>second</em> cannon sliding in on a <em>second</em> and slightly higher rail. Her hull was warmed by the proximity, but not damaged.</p>
<p>“On it yet?!” She shouted, looking up and spitting a Melter missile up and back at a Metal Hawk.</p>
<p>Streaks of Hotarion lights zoomed through the upper parts of the towers, presumably going after Asagi’s fish. Her staticky comm reached Meteor, the broadcast centered on the drones, “Getting there!” Her voice lost quality. “Crap I just lost one!” The signal became even fuzzier. “Lost <em>two!</em> This is <em>nuts!</em>”</p>
<p>Meteor was inclined to agree, as the Ball de Vouxes dropped by the long-gone Bee Blader finally caught up, cornering her in the gap between the towers. Two of them vaulted her cyberwood wall while three more loped at speed from the other end.</p>
<p>She was trapped. The rhythm of the missiles pounded around her. The first beam in the walled-off aisle shot once the second one was finished, cycling death. The stupid deerballs closed their pincer. The stupider Jammingers just hovered and laughed. Her sister was in danger and there was absolutely no way to reach her.</p>
<p>Meteor Showa had <em>enough</em>.</p>
<p>She sicced her koi on the Metal Hawks, the slow dumbfire arcs of the incoming missiles no match for her drones’ agility. She whipped out both of her sabers and went to town on the Balls, carving up a sparky diving Jamminger too when it tried to exploit an opening. She clicked the hilts back home and climbed the signal tower, kickjumping for height. She clambered around to the aisle side, triggering the beam to fire, but she jumped into the leeward side of the neighboring tower well before the scouring beam moved through the gap. She caught a support strut on the way down, jumped <em>back</em> into the first aisle – cutting down Jamminger #3 that tried to ram her in midair – and dashed at the cannon. Her koi, meanwhile, successfully lasered into the thermite-damaged Metal Hawk’s engines and sent it crashing to earth. The missiles striking at her heels diminished by half.</p>
<p>She timed it perfectly, or so she’d thought. The lower-rail beam cannon should have had another moment to charge up, and indeed it did. The higher-rail cannon, however, did not.</p>
<p>It slid into place above its downcycle twin. Pointed at her. All charged up.</p>
<p>Her sister’s last drone saved her a ton of hurt.</p>
<p>The asagi’s forehead slapped onto the upper cannon and stuck in place. The barrel rose and slid down the rail while firing, slashing through a mess of signal towers.</p>
<p>Tower halves and pylon bits crashed all around. A long length of support strut whanged off Meteor’s back. Her drone HUD showed her the beam grazing the other Metal Hawk, so she activated Hanabi and crashed them into its flight system to finish the job.</p>
<p>The wreckage piled up, but she still saw the glow of the unhacked lower cannon building up. She dashed and jumped and got out of its way.</p>
<p>The Victoroid Customer-R intercepted her in the next aisle with a high-speed tackle. Her shields flared.</p>
<p>She punched the custom Vic off her with a fist made of drill bits. The crunch as its face launchers grinded off was incredibly satisfying, but she didn’t have time for follow-ups as she raced ahead. The lower cannon turned the wreckage in its aisle to slag. Meteor fired an Arbor Wall behind her to slow the Victoroid’s pursuit.</p>
<p>“Sis!” Asagi shouted to be heard. “Pull it off if you want it!”</p>
<p>“Not yet! Start charging!”</p>
<p>“But you’re right in the way!”</p>
<p>“<em>I can make it! Do it!</em>”</p>
<p>The upper, hacked cannon started building charge, and so did her Melter. The lower cannon slid into place and built up as well, lagging only a second behind.</p>
<p>Three tiny Hotarions flew at the upper cannon. Meteor cracked off a pair of buster rounds and shot down two. The last one collided, but thankfully not into the commanding drone. It was still under Asagi’s control when it reached max charge. Meteor spewed a Prominence right into the lower cannon’s barrel, dash-jumped over it as it exploded and landed on the upper one.</p>
<p>She tucked her tail up, so as not to lose it.</p>
<p>The Victoroid registered no emotion as it broke down her Arbor Wall only to see the oncoming force beam. It evaporated in the roaring light.</p>
<p>Meteor gently plucked the last drone off the cannon with one hand and stabbed the Zanbato deep into its barrel joint with the other.</p>
<p>“Still safe?” She asked the drone, eye to eye.</p>
<p>“Beamout lock’s still up,” Asagi’s relayed voice crackled. “Sat-cam shows at least a Fill-R incoming. Hurry please.”</p>
<p>She let it go and charged up to the front door. The building was boring and square. The drone headbutted an entry pad and the terminal above blinked in a complicated pattern.</p>
<p>“Wish mine could do that,” said Meteor.</p>
<p>“No chance, yours was never a core system. Plus Recon let me add some real goodies. Our engineers are <em>crazy</em>.”</p>
<p>“You don’t say.”</p>
<p>The doors slid open and the fish disengaged. “S’go.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>A short hall branched into side rooms Meteor ignored. Asagi hacked the last door, which opened into a steep downhill slope. It wasn’t quite an elevator shaft, but three recessed rail slots, one in the middle and one on either side, suggested a movable platform somewhere down in the deep.</p>
<p>“Oh, nuggets,” Asagi swore through the static, “I lost visual. Do you copy?”</p>
<p>“I’m here.”</p>
<p>The drone looked back and forth, frettingly. “I think she fragged my drone on that last hack. I think I’m gonna need a fourth back here anyway. Showa, big sister, I’m sorry, but I need to break contact.”</p>
<p>Meteor grabbed the fish and kissed it on the forehead.</p>
<p>“Do it. I’ll knock her out fast.”</p>
<p>“Love you.”</p>
<p>The drone sparked behind the gills and fell to the ground. It started rolling down the slope, down into the dim. Meteor chased it, quickly overtaking it with the momentum the slope afforded.</p>
<p>The center rail-slot arced with power. A rumble filled the shaft. Twinkles flared in the darkness.</p>
<p>Meteor shot an Arbor Wall ahead of her, and to the credit of its design the wall grew perpendicular to the slope. One or two Hotarions smashed into it and zoomed past her. She carved the wall off the floor with a swipe of her Zanbato and jumped onto it.</p>
<p>Sparks sprayed from the friction of her mount. She rode it like cardboard down a snowy hill. Three Knot Berets rode a platform up the middle rail, but Meteor surfed by before they knew what was happening.</p>
<p>A second platform rose into sight in Meteor’s lane, and in the low light she saw a Victoroid Custom on it supported by two blue Jammingers. Some sort of electrode on the side of the platform shot a line of electricity across the slope into the far wall.</p>
<p>Meteor ducked low to decrease wind resistance and squirted Fluid Lockdown in her path. Her velocity became ballistic. She kicked backwards at the last moment and sent a door-size plank of cyberwood crashing into the Victoroid so hard it toppled clear off the edge and tumbled down and down and down.</p>
<p>Her boots skidded so hard they threw off sparks. The Jammingers’ spikes zapped arcs between them like flying tasers and swooped in. She answered with a dash-jump, swinging her right-hand Zanbato and thrusting her left-hand Gaia Sword, blasting straight through without being touched.</p>
<p>She misjudged her momentum, however. She stuck the landing on the guardrail of the rising platform, snapped it right off and landed bounce-rolling on the slope.</p>
<p>“<em>Ow— frig— heckin’— ngh—</em>”</p>
<p>She drove the spiked hilts of her beam sabers into the slope, buying enough purchase to stop. An explosion echoed downhill.</p>
<p>The left platform rose with a Giga Death on it and another device screening the slope with an electrobeam. The Victoroid seemed to have tumbled straight into the beam and detonated.</p>
<p>Meteor dashed at a diagonal for the “safe” zone with the heavy attacker sitting on it. <em>Left, right, center</em> went its missiles. <em>Jump, weave, dash</em> went Meteor’s body. She made it on, charged around the Giga Death and carved into it with a swipe of her Zanbato. It pivoted to follow, dumbly firing its slow missiles, but that only kept its injured side pointed to her for another slash and a deep stab. Its body exploded and she jumped off the platform.</p>
<p>
  <em>I freaking love this sword.</em>
</p>
<p>The slope leveled off. A hangar-sized door stood open and began rolling itself shut at her approach. She dashed through and found herself in a new hall.</p>
<p>For lack of a navigator, Meteor brought up her own instance of an archival map in her HUD – part of the standard data package that came with accepting any mission. The communications bunker wasn’t Repliforce-built, but from all the new cables lining the corners of the floor, Morpho had definitely made it home. The strongest lights were comm screens and terminals, casting a piercing blue light over the Knot Berets abandoning them to attack her.</p>
<p>She was in no mood for their nonsense. Buster fire and a thermite grenade dismissed them. Three of the little Hotarions buzzed in, but rather than collide, they gathered at the ceiling, pointed their thoraxes and streaked thin lasers across the floor. She switched to Wellbore Drill and fired twice, spraying six grinder bits. Grass would have put up more of a physical resistance than the little fireflies did.</p>
<p>Every monitor Meteor passed suddenly switched its feed to a live cam coming over the mountains. They showed the distant listening post at the foot of the mountains. From multiple angles.</p>
<p>
  <em>Crap crap crap crap…</em>
</p>
<p>Every screen switched away to Arc Morpho’s winning smile. The camera angle was close on her face, showing only a conventionally feminine nose and jaw. Her skin was a bright electric green with shiny black lipstick.</p>
<p>“Tired yet? By my count you should be nearing half health with tactically diminished variable weapon energy.”</p>
<p>Meteor spat thermite at a lock panel and the doors obligingly opened.</p>
<p>A purple, new-model Spark Gunner awaited her around the next corner. It squatted down and released a pair of electric orbs which raced down the conductivity of the floor for Meteor’s legs.</p>
<p>
  <em>No time.</em>
</p>
<p>She put everything into her dash, jumped the sparks and landed slashing. She knew the new Spark Gunner model as being sturdier than it had any right to be, but not if somebody were to jam a wedge-shaped hi-beam into its spark emitters as she did. She didn’t stop to watch her foe explode.</p>
<p>The monitors changed to show different halves and quarters of Morpho’s face, though no group of displays were arranged such that they made a complete picture. Her eyes were big and sharp and compound-lensed under their lids. Her helmet was a bold royal blue and her antennae resembled those of ancient radios. A black beret behind the antennae bore a Repliforce insignia.</p>
<p>“You’ve lost weight,” Morpho taunted. “Flex Architecture parts, am I right? Recon officers are full of them, too – which leaves little frame space for armor. The Raider Killers on that transport won’t take long to rip your little sister apart.”</p>
<p>Meteor’s map showed the control center lay ahead through another terminal room. She tried not to listen as she ran.</p>
<p>“It’s so easy to fight for <em>yourself</em>, isn’t it, Showa? So easy to blaze ahead like a gambler on a roll when the only one at risk is you. When all you can lose is time and money.” Two pairs of mini-Hotarions buzzed out of holes in the wall and tried to screen her with crossing lasers, but she filled the ceiling with six drill bits. Enough hit the bugs to put their lights out. “Repliforce fights for more than selfishness. We know love. We know the pain of loss. I think it’s time you learned that lesson, Maverick. You’ve taken enough from us. Your bill is coming due.”</p>
<p>A blast door opened at Meteor’s approach and led to a dark room. Meteor charged up a Prominence.</p>
<p>She expected sparks. She expected beams.</p>
<p>She did not expect the lids to open on a giant red eye.</p>
<p>LED lines lit up along the walls, floor, and ceiling. The soft light revealed the Generaid Core, one of Repliforce’s biggest and toughest security barrier mechaniloids. The bloodshot shielded optic was set into a wall that was definitely not on her map.</p>
<p>Four hatches in the corners of the ceiling opened up. Two butterfly drones flew down on jetpack thoraxes. Their wings began to build a compression charge.</p>
<p>Meteor brought up a drill and sprayed the butterflies. One took a bit to the face and went down while the other angled its wings together and released a shimmering force beam. The telegraphing helped Meteor avoid it and another three-bit Wellbore took it down. The spare bits clanged around the walls and one ricocheted off the eye, making the lids shut.</p>
<p>Two more butterflies and a blue taser-Jamminger dropped out of the hatches. Meteor spewed a bright Prominence stream right over the armored eyelids, making them weep with molten metal. A swing with her Gaia Sword took out the diving Jamminger and a few buster shots brought down the slow butterflies before they could fire.</p>
<p>The eye opened, dripping molten tears like a hungover nightmare. Not even its defensive lids could nullify the heat of Meteor’s primary weapon.</p>
<p>Meteor swapped her fist for a drill, jumped up and mimicked the uppercut Volt had used on her. Shield sparks erupted as the bits chewed into the eye. Elements of the floor and ceiling start rupturing along with the wall.</p>
<p>Meteor hit the floor and turned around to retreat from the explosion.</p>
<p>Six more butterflies were already there.</p>
<p>Meteor panic-fired her drill twice. Three of the six spread-shot bits found a butterfly and chewed it to scrap.</p>
<p>Which still left three.</p>
<p>Meteor’s wide-set field of vision and twitchy reflexes let her dodge two, but the third beam raked across the side of her torso and over her shoulder plating. Her shields strobed. She let them as she angrily jumped and swatted down the pests one by one with her mighty plasma broadsword.</p>
<p>With the Core blown open, she saw through parts of the substructure. A hall lay beyond, matching the original facility map. Luckily, cutting through wreckage was literally what Meteor was built for. Her thermite and her wonderful Zanbato made short work of the inert roadblock.</p>
<p>A single Jamminger hovered just ahead.</p>
<p>“Well well,” Morpho spoke through it. “I’ll tell you what, if you can last twenty-five seconds—”</p>
<p>Meteor spat a grenade at the mouthy mechaniloid and dashed under its burning wreckage.</p>
<p>“I bet you can still hear me,” she spoke up as she ran, her buster humming to charge. “And I even bet you think leaving us for Repliforce was worth it!”</p>
<p>“Evolution requires sacrifice,” Morpho’s voice echoed through the dark, LED-speckled final hall. “The future belongs to us.”</p>
<p>“Then enjoy your last minute of it, Maverick. Me and Asagi are <em>both</em> walking out of here!”</p>
<p>The final door opened. The central control of the Andes Array was a donut-shaped room lined with and lit by comm terminals.</p>
<p>Arc Morpho stood poised on the central display dais. She was no taller than Deco, but her broad, black-fronted, blue-trimmed wings quadrupled her total size. The eight green eyespots of her wings, two high and six low, seemed to focus on Meteor.</p>
<p>Every screen showed the current room with a red dot in the corner. Meteor was on live, to the entire world for all she knew.</p>
<p>“Give the gamblers at home a good show, hmm?” The butterfly flicked up her wrists and opened her hands. “<em>Whatever’s on the table plays!</em>” She vanished from sight – revealing the three butterfly drones that had been building charge behind her.</p>
<p>
  <em>Cyberspace? No – active camo!</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor released her buster blast, striking the middle butterfly and nothing else as she dodged left. The remaining two raked the floor with their beams. Meteor hopped one and dash-ducked the other, staying distant and shooting them down.</p>
<p>
  <em>Now where’s their mommy?</em>
</p>
<p>Three shuriken flashed out of an upper corner. They were too small, too fast.</p>
<p>Oddly, the hit didn’t hurt. Tiny shiny bladed butterflies stuck into Meteor’s shoulder, chest, and hip. She reached to remove one, but all three dazzled her body with electricity. Her flashing shields took the edge off the pain, but Morpho capitalized on it by breaking cover with her back turned – angling her bright blue wing-backs.</p>
<p>Flex parts, Meteor quickly learned, took much less time to recover from a stun. She ran to gain distance and dispatched a koi to close it. Morpho released a parabolic death beam from her back that chased Meteor and melted into the floor.</p>
<p>A full second later, her drone’s lasering evidently passed Morpho’s point of irritation. The Maverick folded her wings, jerked her head to the speedy drone, and struck it down with a coiled proboscis tongue as fast as lightning. The drone instantly spasmed and exploded.</p>
<p>She took to the air and flitted side to side as Meteor fired a barrage of small buster rounds. Morpho evaded each and grinned as she reeled her tongue back in. She flung more shuriken in threes, but each one was tethered to its neighbor with lightning that spread as they neared their target. Meteor waited them out, tucked her arms in and jumped through the gaps.</p>
<p>The upper eyes on Morpho’s wings flashed a disorienting dazzle. In the hard blink Meteor clenched in reaction, she was gone. Meteor spat an ordinary thermite glob where she was, but it only arced and splatted on the floor.</p>
<p>Her outermost armor layer felt… fuzzy.</p>
<p>Off in a high corner, an arc of electricity zapped up as if from a pair of antennae.</p>
<p>Meteor spiked an Arbor Wall seed at the floor.</p>
<p>A flash of lightning, conjured with an angry thunderous rip of the world’s biggest and rustiest zipper, struck not her but her barrier. The wood completely blew apart, each splinter harmlessly coursing with jumping arcs as they pelted Meteor like rain.</p>
<p>Morpho reappeared and fired two beams from her highest wingspots, slashing them across the room with apparent disregard for the equipment. Meteor jumped the swing of the beams – getting herself caught out in midair as Morpho threw two electric-tethered shuriken trios not in triangles but in straight lines, one horizontal and one vertical.</p>
<p>The surprise was the deciding factor. Meteor threw herself to one side of the vertical and got clotheslined by the horizontal. Her body seized up and flashed, giving Morpho time to focus her wingspots.</p>
<p>The Hunter grabbed for her Gaia Sword but sprayed a Fluid Lockdown first for a surprise factor of her own. The liquid arc swiped out, but Morpho rose fast enough to only catch it across the ankles. Her shields flashed anyway – and her lower six wingspots flashed brighter still, dazzling Meteor blind.</p>
<p>Meteor came out of the blink to see not one but four Arc Morphos, one to a corner. All of them dived for her.</p>
<p>But she had two swords.</p>
<p>She ignited both hi-beams and pulled off a deadly spin. The blades destroyed the three holoforms by eating the tiny butterflies generating them. The fourth Morpho pulled a forward flip over the long blade and kept coming.</p>
<p>Meteor greeted her with a Melter grenade. Morpho greeted her back with an electric tongue lash.</p>
<p>Meteor sizzled under unknowable live-wire voltage coursing over and through her, shocking and burning hotter than fire, but Morpho’s own pained yells through the burn of thermite helped Meteor’s mood. Her LIFE cell blared to her about “SUB 30%,” but all her limbs were still in working order.</p>
<p>Both of them came out of the damage reaction at the same time. Meteor stowed the Zanbato, thrust the Gaia, switched to Wellbore Drill. Morpho threw non-electrified butterfly shuriken left and right, not even aiming, apparently going for saturation. She zipped around less like a moth than a housefly, keeping well way from the blade strikes.</p>
<p>Meteor connected the dots.</p>
<p>
  <em>What’s she afraid of? The blade or the stake?</em>
</p>
<p>She stuck the tip of the green plasma blade into the floor and fired two drill-spreads. Morpho went totally on the defensive, slipping past every single one and flitting overhead, scattering more bladed butterflies. The cyberwood stake formed out of Meteor’s hilt. She yanked it free, turned to Morpho—</p>
<p>“Fry, fish.”</p>
<p>The Maverick clapped her hands together.</p>
<p>Every “missed” shuriken on the floor lit up. A lightning tide of electrical dome-bursts rolled at Meteor, overlapping each other.</p>
<p>There was no escape. The overlapping damage would have been extreme.</p>
<p>So she chucked her lightning rod into the surge.</p>
<p>The arcs snapped directly to the wood, nice and controlled, giving Meteor the empty space that she needed to dash-jump over it all even as the stake ruptured.</p>
<p>The fuzzy feeling of ionization prickled her surface. Morpho opened her mouth.</p>
<p>Meteor fired a seed.</p>
<p>Morpho saw the woody football coming, slammed her mouth shut and blurred her big wings to escape. A follow-up seed fell to a crossfire of wing-spot beams that slashed Meteor in the legs, but the third was too much for her overlarge wings to avoid. It smacked her left wing and cracked out into an octopus of constricting roots. The butterfly screamed as the fragile wing snapped and crumpled under the pressure, snaring her second wing and mangling it too when it beat too close to the first. The damage was tremendous, <em>crippling</em>, exactly the right weapon for exactly the right foe. Her shields raved.</p>
<p>Morpho landed on her feet, black lips curling livid across her green cheeks, sparks between her antennae arcing wildly, as furious and deadly as a wounded animal. The Arbor Wall grip fell to the floor and took the crushed scraps of her former wings with it.</p>
<p>Sparks shot from destroyed terminals, but those that remained showed four familiar blue and orange fish putting up a feeble resistance at trying to laser the camera while dodging off-screen buster fire.</p>
<p>Meteor’s last two koi darted from her buster as she reached to her back. Her hand popped back out to grab the Zanbato.</p>
<p>Morpho reacted with three hops backward. On each hop she threw electric-bridged butterflies as her antennae sparked up.</p>
<p>The lines were quick, diagonal-diagonal-horizontal, but standing on death ground with her sister in peril, Meteor was quicker.</p>
<p>
  <em>Dodge left, dodge right, jump. Push. Make her think you’re coming for melee. Burn the fish. Fireball pincer.</em>
</p>
<p>Fast as the showas were, Morpho struck them down with a swipe of both arms and more infinite shuriken. Flame and lightning erupted to her sides. She jumped back, curled her fists.</p>
<p>Meteor’s thoughts latched together one at a time. They become her actions. Instant by instant.</p>
<p>She tossed the Zanbato to her left hand. Formed her buster. Splashed a Lockdown carpet and caught the hilt underhand.</p>
<p>Morpho threw more electric lines, three by three, screening her to the last.</p>
<p>Meteor slid under the first line. Fired an Arbor Wall ahead. Being that much closer to the ground, the seed struck the floor and began springing out. Her feet crashed into it from one side as an electric butterfly struck it from the other and broke its line to its partners. She kicked out a dash even as the wall kept forming, slip-sliding her back down the chilly gripping cryomer splat.</p>
<p>Morpho nimbly jumped over the wall, fists full of more butterflies.</p>
<p>It was her last mistake.</p>
<p>Behind the wall, she couldn’t have seen the <em>other</em> seed Meteor had fired up at an angle in the space between seconds.</p>
<p>The seed erupted on contact, pinning Morpho’s arms to her chest and squeezing the life out of her shields. She landed rolling, shrieking in anguish.</p>
<p>She rolled over the ice toward Meteor. Too close.</p>
<p>Meteor retreated before the proboscis could touch her. It struck like a whip and only electrocuted a terminal, exploding the screen. The Maverick flailed her legs, caught a toe on something solid and kicked herself away for precious distance. Even then, even bound from the waist up by thick roots, she still had fight in her.</p>
<p>Meteor pointed her buster arm. Her throat hummed up instead.</p>
<p>“Morpho. It’s over.”</p>
<p>Morpho got a foot under herself, pushed up, and staggered back almost comically. The wood hugged like a straightjacket. Her eyes faded in and out.</p>
<p>“Drop the interdiction field and stop attacking my sister,” Meteor ordered. “<em>Now</em>.”</p>
<p>Morpho grinned crookedly. The remaining terminals blinked to a close-up of her face. Sparks jumped from antenna to antenna.</p>
<p>“Fight on. <em>Fight on—!</em>”</p>
<p>Meteor’s solar-bright arc of liquid aluminum drenched the wood, center-mass, touching off a fatal conflagration. Morpho laughed, even then. As her shields blinked in slow last-gasp fashion, she threw back her head and filled the world with her final propaganda.</p>
<p>“<em>Fiiiight onnn!</em>”</p>
<p>Her eyes broke like glass as her antennae fired a titanic pulse of electricity, an EMP riding a wave of lightning that rolled into and over Meteor, knocking her flat and frying every terminal. The hug of the cyberwood did nothing at all to contain the explosion of Morpho’s overloading body.</p>
<p>Meteor’s internal warnings screamed loud enough to wash out the noise, the Maverick’s core failure the only light in the room… which faded out, leaving her in pitch-black silence.</p>
<p>She could move, but the buzzing in her limbs didn’t recommend it. Her infra-red lamps beamed out, painting the world in grays. Wreckage lay everywhere.</p>
<p>Lacking options, she stayed down.</p>
<p>“Asagi?”</p>
<p>Static. She touched her ear, defying the loud protests of her major joints and all their little friends.</p>
<p>“Meteor Showa to Fifth?”</p>
<p>Dead air.</p>
<p>She wondered how shielded the command bunker was. The slope had gone down a long way into the mountain.</p>
<p>She closed her eyes. It was about the only range of motion that didn’t hurt when she tried it.</p>
<p>{s}</p>
<p>She reopened her eyes for the sake of a letter.</p>
<p>{mp [SIGNAL CORRUPT]}</p>
<p>{Asagi I can’t even tell if that’s you}</p>
<p>{bd cnctn tr fm chnl}</p>
<p>{What?}</p>
<p>{swtch chnl sstr}</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>Hello?</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>OH MY GOD SHOWA (＠O＠;)</p>
<p>Okay so</p>
<p>The EMP fried standard CPU-based text</p>
<p>But this is like, the brain matrix stuff Kujaku set up ヘ(´－｀;)ヘ</p>
<p>So anyway there’s</p>
<p>a pickup crew headed your way</p>
<p>Just</p>
<p>Wow I’m sorry I’m just really keyed up right now</p>
<p>Had a Bee Blader crash into the post (/;◇;)/</p>
<p>TWO Bee Bladers (((･Α･川)))</p>
<p>It’s okay though ‘cause I’d hacked one and crashed it into the fly</p>
<p>and</p>
<p>Y’know what you just take a nap for now (*￣▽￣)d</p>
<p>I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you ಥ_ಥ</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>I love you back. By the way, I’m in the bunker and, um, really hurt again. Sorry.</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>We know, Showa. Asagi was</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>KUJAKU THIS IS A PRIVATE CONVERSATION!!!  (╬ಠ益ಠ)</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>It quite literally isn’t!</p>
<p>&gt;[C.SANKE]</p>
<p>‘Sup.</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>Don’t read this Sanke! ヽ(ﾟДﾟ)ﾉ It’s technically mission-vital communication! I could probably get in trouble!  ((;ﾟДﾟ))</p>
<p>&gt;[C.SANKE]</p>
<p>So it has to be recorded? (ʃƪ¬‿¬)</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>DON’T YOU</p>
<p>&gt;[C.SANKE]</p>
<p>butts</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor let her arm flop down and clank on the floor.</p>
<p>It hurt to laugh.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:<br/>“Reploid Relationships”</p>
<p>Much like the human brain, the reploid brain – an electron-path matrix of crystal that is grown as much as it is designed – is naturally tuned to high socialization and team-building. This allows them to forge emotional bonds as well as any human.</p>
<p>Reploids use terms such as “mother” and “father” for individuals directly involved in their design, their construction, or their Decisions, Empathy, and Nature (“DEN”) reliability-testing and socialization period. Most reploids, being production models, consider their parent(s) to be the specialized psychologist(s) assigned to them during their DEN period.</p>
<p>“Siblings” are reploids sharing the same designers, builders, or DEN specialists – sometimes at the very same time. This is more common when the reploids in question are specialized and/or custom designs. “Half-siblings” share only part of their specialists. “Cousins” are members of a single mass-production model created and raised at different locations. Though the non-biological nature of reploid production makes familial titles essentially optional, DEN specialists often encourage forming bonds with one’s “relatives.”</p>
<p>Whether or not they are related, reploids form very strong bonds of friendship, and with an ease and endurance often envied by humans. Reploid friends live, die, celebrate, and mourn together, and even keep in touch throughout their lives in emotionally enriching and satisfying ways. For most, friends are family enough.</p>
<p>Reploids interested in increasing intimacy with specific friends sometimes go on dates with them. Marriage is considered simply the very strongest declaration of emotional intimacy between people who have already developed a dear friendship. It is never entered into lightly, whether with one friend or many.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. The Offer</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>After a restorative rest, Meteor exercises some introspection and works out her feelings at the sims. She then receives an unexpected offer.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Meteor didn’t remember falling asleep. Nor did she remember the logical sequence of events that had to have happened for her to wake up at an angle in a diagnostic pod in a holding room just off the medbay.</p>
<p>The surface of the pod was speckled with stickers. Being on the inside, she could only tell they were solid white silhouettes of fish.</p>
<p><em>Asagi</em>—</p>
<p>She tried to move. She couldn’t. Not even her eyes.</p>
<p>“Welcome back, ma’am,” Vitamin greeted from the adjacent terminal. “Their Highness wanted me to suggest to you upon waking that one hundred six years had passed, but I won’t. It’s seven thirty-one local time, September eighth, not even a full day after you fell into emergency repair mode. Arc Morpho’s last electrical burst was meant to kill you. It didn’t, but it and her electrical attacks gave you significant internal trauma.”</p>
<p>“I can see that,” Meteor tried speaking aloud, and surprised herself by succeeding.</p>
<p>“The diagnostic shows you’re surprised?” Vitamin typed away. “You haven’t had a proper sleep cycle in days. That’s <em>sleep</em>, Lieutenant, not med-recharge or auto-hibernate. We might not have natural circadian rhythms, but a rest period is still of demonstrable value to the electronic brain.” He looked over at her, just for the positive bedside manner as his hands kept working. “Knowing your work ethic would send you straight out to the field again, I felt it prudent to enforce your down time until you were completely restored. So did Their Highness. And Commander Proteus.”</p>
<p>Meteor wasn’t pleased with being kept offline longer than she absolutely had to be. Still, in a way having little to do with her LIFE cell, she did feel a little more… settled and cleared. Peppy. Ret-to-go.</p>
<p>“Well thanks, Vitamin.”</p>
<p>“You’re welcome. I’m just easing you off the induced paralysis from the head down. Your systems did commendable work keeping you online after the pulse for as long as they did. You chose them well.”</p>
<p>“All in the choice of technician, I bet.” The motor control for her neck kicks back in, so she looked around. “Was my sister— was Swift Asagi of the local Second Recon here?”</p>
<p>“No, but she sent a sheet of Japanese removable stickers with the express order to make your pod, and I quote, ‘look cute.’ Their Grace fussed with them a while, arranging them with great care.”</p>
<p>Meteor’s shoulders came back under her control. She rolled them. “Grace? Did Skittle take a new title?”</p>
<p>“No, Their Highness—” Vitamin closed his eyes for a short yet meaningful interval— “<em>suggested</em>, politely, that we call Golau Gwyfyn by that title.”</p>
<p>“Ah. They’re really a different person around Golau, huh?”</p>
<p>“Enough that the nurses are clamoring to keep them around solely for the stabilizing effect they have on Their Highness. For instance, your ‘choice of technician’ hasn’t cursed aloud once since Their Grace arrived.”</p>
<p>“You’re kidding.”</p>
<p>“No further instances of limb-hacking, either.”</p>
<p>“Limb— why would they even <em>do</em> that?”</p>
<p>“Eff-Two’s conservative pace with repairing your motor control systems annoyed them,” said Vitamin, civilly honest as ever. “Their Highness was convinced that they could perform surgery, remotely, through Eff-Two’s hands, while seated in another room, with no line of sight, faster than he could.”</p>
<p>“Um. Did they?”</p>
<p>Vitamin simply closed his eyes and made a sighing noise as sensation returned to Meteor’s feet. The capsule split along the seam and opened to let her out; one of the fish stickers flopped free, half-applied on a seam.</p>
<p>“Please remain Scatter Seelie’s friend for as long as you possibly can, Lieutenant. The more emotionally stabilizing factors in their life, the better we’ll all sleep. The world could not afford them finding a new employer, a less ethical personal standard, or both. I’m sure you understand me.”</p>
<p>How could she not?</p>
<p>“Copy that.” She bounced a little on one leg; everything seemed in order. “They in the lab?”</p>
<p>“As per usual. Take care.”</p>
<p>The instant Meteor entered the quarantine hall, Golau fluttered up to them. They wore a Mettaur hard-hat so oversized to purpose that it tipped forward and covered their eyes when they stopped short. They waved glowing safety-cone wands in Meteor’s face.</p>
<p>“No no no! Unsafe! This is a construction zone, it is!”</p>
<p>“Construction?” She peered around.</p>
<p>Light flashed from one of the cells and smoke immediately poured from its neighbor.</p>
<p>Golau tilted their helmet back up with the tip of a wand. “Our Scatter’s expanding the upgrade facility again. Even with two cells’ worth of space things were still a bit cramped with the equipment, now with Mister Monitor quite wider than anyone but Miss Turtle, they felt that—”</p>
<p>Another blast breached another open cell.</p>
<p>“Take <em>that</em>, Maverick wall!” Skittle laughed out of sight.</p>
<p>Golau sheepishly wiggle-tilted their unfitted helmet into balance. “Once it’s done you shan’t be feeling like they’re upgrading you in a shoebox.”</p>
<p>“Oh, that’s fine, I didn’t mind. Though I imagine Monitor would like to be able to turn around.”</p>
<p>Skittle flitted out of a middle room, lugging what looked for all the world to be a blunderbuss. The trumpet-ended cannon was rimmed with tiny buster emitters.</p>
<p>“Let the decidedly-un-waify stray you picked up deal with it,” Skittle shouldered the gun. “This heckspansion is for me to work on multiple bodies at once if I gotta. Don’t mind the dust, I can see to you in a jiffy. Terminal’s inside if you want to check your check.”</p>
<p>“Well that depends. Is the construction zone safe?” Meteor kindly asked Golau.</p>
<p>They adjusted their too-big helmet. “It does seem like the, er, crew’s on break, so come on in!”</p>
<p>Golau wanded you in like a child playing at being ancient airstrip signaler. She followed their directions, playing along.</p>
<p>A terminal was a little dusty, but warm and waiting for her.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>MISSION</p>
<p>C O M P L E T E</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- A-Rank Mission Parameters Complete: 35,000z</p>
<p>- Disruption of Enemy Coordination: 10,000z</p>
<p>- Repliforce Cell Neutralization: 5,000z</p>
<p>- BUSTR Inc. Gratuity: Lifetime Iridium Account Upgrade</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TOTAL: 50,000z</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>That last item hooked her attention. She took a fresh datapad off a dusty, toy-strewn shelf and synced to it. The first place she piloted her artfully arranged desktop was to the recently-commandeered king of social media.</p>
<p>Little balloons fell over the screen.</p>
<p>CONGRATULATIONS NEW IRIDIUM MEMBER, her Bustr page declared. YOU ARE NOW ENTITLED TO LIFETIME IRIDIUM ACCOUNT BENEFITS: ZERO ADVERTISEMENTS, FREE SPONSORED SHOTS, FULL-SPECTRUM FILTERS, EXCLUSIVE USER ICON WREATHS, AND MORE! START ENJOYING THE DIFFERENCE TODAY!</p>
<p>She had always coveted a nice frame of bubbles around her icon, but it had been behind a paywall. No longer.</p>
<p>Her aggregator feed had a few stories highlighted at the top. The highlights – she never knew that Iridium-tier gave them sparkles – meant that they had something to do with her personally.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>&gt; NOTE FROM MANAGEMENT</p>
<p>Bustr reminds all users that certified Maverick Hunter members may be praised through the Charge function on their public-facing account pages. Unsolicited offers of marriage and/or pleasurable favors are categorically a form of harassment. Furthermore, uploading explicit artwork of Mavericks and/or Maverick Hunters is prohibited under…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&gt; “FINAL BOSS OF BUSTR” SIM DATA NOW AVAILABLE</p>
<p>We all saw it live – the epic confrontation between Meteor Showa and Arc Morpho – but how well would YOU have fared against the propagandist butterfly? Titanium-tier members and above can now access combat sim data at any Punch Weasel Sporting Goods location…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&gt; FISH REPLOID GROUP CELEBRATES NEW ROLE MODEL</p>
<p>“It’s about damn time a fishbot was a hero,” announced Torrent Marlin, President of the 200-member Pisciform Support League, in a public statement earlier today. “We’re mocked and overlooked as menial labor, too lightly represented in the Hunters, too heavily represented by Mavericks, but now…”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&gt; SENDAI RELIABLE UNDERWATER CONSTRUCTION PRAISES FAVORITE DAUGHTER</p>
<p>Japanese construction firm Sendai Shikkari Suichu Kensetsu (z$:SSK) released an official statement—</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>“<em>Right!</em>” Skittle clapped so loudly they made Meteor jump. “Scootch aside, lemme show you what’s on offer.”</p>
<p>“Um. Sure, sorry.”</p>
<p>She reluctantly put away the datapad and backed up to let Skittle load the upgrade menu.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>&gt; VWES Options:</p>
<p>Lightning time! Also force beams.</p>
<p>“Shining Spark” – Points a harmless ionizing laser which, after one second of continuous contact, follows through with a single massive bolt of lightning. Underwater, the bolt fires automatically, but comes in wild lashing arcs. 12 shots.</p>
<p>“Dancing Spark” – Fires a butterfly projectile. If it strikes a body, it shoots electricity through it and then through any of their buddies within three meters. If it strikes a wall or floor, it bursts a three-meter electric pulse through that surface, shocking any dumb bugger within range. 16 shots.</p>
<p>“Shining Dancer” – Fires a butterfly drone bigger than one of your fish. It’ll flutter in place for two seconds ‘til it gets a super-accurate bead on your target, then lets fly with a force beam. The beam will fire for one second, ending when it overloads and kills the drone. 8 shots.</p>
<p>Synergy:</p>
<p>“Butterfly Koi” – Combines Arc Morpho’s DNA with Remote Koi. The power of each fish drone’s laser is doubled, but each drone will now self-destruct after firing once, and the aesthetics of the drone’s longer fins will bother koi purists. Still 12 shots. The Hanabi upgrade’s base damage will increase to reach parity with the laser.</p>
<p>“Spark Hand-Drill” – I’m proud of this one. Arc Morpho’s DNA can marry wonderfully to Wellbore Drill, adding an electrical current to the drills for increased damage. The spread of the grinder drills will be a <em>little</em> diminished, but damaging electrical arcs will persist between them until contacting an enemy or solid object. 16 shots, down from 24, or a maximum of 48 seconds of spin for a single unfired sparkdrill.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&gt; Leftovers What Taste Better The Day After</p>
<p>Your body’s almost tricked out. No more space for new frame parts unless you want to remove one. Still got those Charge Capacitor parts from last time, of course, or you could buy a new toy for your hardpoint. I could also flavor a saber with ice <em>or</em> lightning now, but it’s double cost to fit in your big one. As for truly new things, this might come in handy…</p>
<p>“Repulsor Wing” – A thick bracelet device projects a butterfly-shaped kinetic barrier which repels plasma ordinance and clashes against beam sabers. Its “durability,” or total damage-null capacity, is about four times that of an Arbor Wall, and it <em>will</em> break if you go over that limit. 10,000z.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor snickered.</p>
<p>“Spark Hand-Drill?”</p>
<p>“Clever, isn’t it?” Skittle beamed. “See ‘cause it’s—”</p>
<p>“I know what it is. And I want it. Morpho’s little butterfly arcs weren’t much fun to dodge.”</p>
<p>“And these won’t be either,” Skittle rubbed their hands. “Since there’s three bits, it can’t give you a straight tripwire arc like hers, so what it’ll give instead is a spreading triangle sort’ve thing. Just with less spread than what’s on already, like. Golau, wanna prep the DNA synth?”</p>
<p>“Do I!” Golau fluttered over to another terminal.</p>
<p>“What else?” Skittle asked.</p>
<p>“Just a couple things, and I’ll save the rest of the zenny. First, that butterfly shield.”</p>
<p>“Going for more defense, are you?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, lately I’ve had some lecturing to that effect and I think I ought to listen. Second?” Meteor popped her Zanbato free, unignited. “Can you make this baby an ice saber?”</p>
<p>Golau turned their head to join Skittle in a wide-eyed stare of possibility.</p>
<p>“Um,” she continued, “if it’s not too much trouble.”</p>
<p>Skittle held their hands out, palm-up, side by side, head bowed. Meteor took the cue and, with some ceremony, daintily placed the hilt in their hands.</p>
<p>“Do you know what you’re asking me to do?”</p>
<p>“Kinda?”</p>
<p>They jauntily flipped the hilt in the air and snapped it up on the descent. “Saber tech hit a renaissance in the war. Used to be you’d have to stick liquid nitrogen generators on a hilt for the old one-two thermobreak punch. Now I can slap on some stock data to get a solid crystalline cryomer mass for the blade.”</p>
<p>“Solid? But the data—”</p>
<p>“Ap-ap-ap, shush,” Skittle pinched their fingers together. “A slapdash icicle saber isn’t worthy of you, it isn’t. What I’ll do is get you the one-two, but the first hit won’t be boring old ellen. It’ll be liquid cryomer in an electromagnetic sheath. Still gets you the hard temperature shock with the high-phase followup, but it’s a lot more efficient, like. And with that saber pack always topping it off, you can swing it all day!”</p>
<p>“I like the sound of that.”</p>
<p>“It’ll be rather like your Gaia Sword,” Golau noted, “only backwards. Element first, then the beam. And <em>what</em> a beam!”</p>
<p>“Stick your eyeballs back in,” Skittle reprimanded their sibling, “we got work to do!”</p>
<p>And work they did. Golau synthesized the Maverick DNA; Meteor watched as complicated code-strings of flighty blue and rocky orange twined together in the visualization emulator, giving the serious and technologically sound science an interesting semi-accurate lies-to-children feel. Skittle finished with the saber and shield at a crafting table before Golau was done, and assessed their work while Meteor waited.</p>
<p>The critique was positive. Constructive. Educational. Meteor smiled to see her friend’s rarer, kinder side.</p>
<p>“Right then,” Skittle concluded, “we’re done here. Now get outta the work zone, I’ve got expansions to expand.”</p>
<p>“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t!” Golau elbowed Meteor and winked.</p>
<p>Skittle clamped a hand over their mouth. “<em>Hushshshush!</em> Eh-heh, never mind them, you just go have fun, yeah?”</p>
<p>
  <em>Well that was weird.</em>
</p>
<p>“Oh… kay? Thanks as always.”</p>
<p>Meteor put it out of her mind as she walked out of the lab, fully equipped and with 20,000 zenny still in her account.</p>
<p>And a news item unread.</p>
<p>It began, “Japanese construction firm Sendai Shikkari Suichu Kensetsu (z$:SSK) released an official statement earlier today regarding their newly famous daughter, Meteor Showa. Here in full is the release by Director Sanae Hisakawa.</p>
<p>“SSKN-KS04, Meteor Showa, first of our Koi Series to join the Maverick Hunters, has freed the world from a major incursion of propaganda and severely disrupted Repliforce hacking attempts and internal communications. Furthermore, not twenty-four hours prior, she was instrumental in recovering a major energen cave in Venezuela from Repliforce control <em>and</em> preventing Repliforce from gaining a strong foothold in inland Australia. Ever since her near-destruction in the closing days of the war, she has disrupted significant Maverick activity in the Western Hemisphere from the central United States to the tip of Antarctica. We could not be prouder of her performance and the honor she has given our company. Everyone at Sendai Reliable Underwater Construction prays for her continued safety and success.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Aw, Mom…</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor checked her Bustr messages as she headed for the skybridge to lounge.</p>
<p>
  <em>Oh. There’s one from Dad…</em>
</p>
<p>It was two words long. “Good work.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Gosh, Dad, don’t get so emotional.</em>
</p>
<p>Parents were many things to many people. When Meteor needed affirmation, she knew where to find it.</p>
<p>And when she wanted a little loving chaos…</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>Hey guys.</p>
<p>&gt;[C.SANKE]</p>
<p>There she is.</p>
<p>&gt;[G.CHAGOI]</p>
<p>WAY TO RETIRE THAT MAVERICK, SHOWA, YOU LOOKED LIKE AN ACTION HERO :)</p>
<p>NOW SHOW THOSE PIRATES SOME OF THAT :)!!!!</p>
<p>&gt;[S.KOHAKU]</p>
<p>d=(´▽｀)=b</p>
<p>&gt;[A.TANCHO]</p>
<p>fluttering blue wings</p>
<p>broken, melted, grounded, gone</p>
<p>arcs of light darkened</p>
<p>ice and wood and flame</p>
<p>a tricolor hunter’s will</p>
<p>&gt;[C.SANKE]</p>
<p>she owes me zenny</p>
<p>&gt;[A.TANCHO]</p>
<p>shut your mouth sanke</p>
<p>&gt;[C.SANKE]</p>
<p>come over here and say that</p>
<p>&gt;[A.TANCHO]</p>
<p>cease this mockery</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>Is Asagi on the channel?</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>She should be.</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>Just now, hi!!! How’d you like the stickers??? ^ㅂ^</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>Very cute.</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>I got away in one piece thanks to you, but it was a close call, wasn’t it? ；￣ロ￣）</p>
<p>Seriously, Showa, I might have died… ((´д｀))</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>I had every confidence in you. I couldn’t have even gotten in the door without your drones!</p>
<p>&gt;[S.ASAGI]</p>
<p>That’s true, isn’t it? (￣^￣)</p>
<p>But more importantly, I’m glad you’re all right. ♡＾▽＾♡</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>Your retirement mission was splendidly done, Showa. Father likely gave you some taciturn praise easily mistaken for lack of concern, but you know as well as I do that’s just his way.</p>
<p>&gt;[M.SHOWA]</p>
<p>Yeah, no kidding.</p>
<p>&gt;[B.KUJAKU]</p>
<p>Please understand that we’re all extremely proud of you. It’s all we can do to follow your lead.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>
  <em>I’m so lucky to have them.</em>
</p>
<p>Sunlight filled the glass dome of the skybridge crossing. The weather was clear.</p>
<p>Meteor skygazed. Her mind wandered. The dome’s baked-on “I LOVE MY FRIENDS” message that she had pranked into existence wasn’t in a hurry to leave.</p>
<p>The message was true, of course. Humans had thousands of years of culture describing all the permutations of the feeling, and most of it describing Platonic closeness matched how she felt about her friends. She loved them like she loved her family. She just wasn’t <em>in love</em> with them. The click had never clicked. There was no shame attached to the fact, no judgment from anyone up to and including herself… but there was still a rasping friction to it, an unsanded side causing feelings of contentment to drag instead of flow. Meteor prided herself on efficiency – on using all available resources and wasting none. Time was everyone’s most vital resource. If she were <em>dating</em> one or more of her friends, she might better optimize the potential love expressed and exchanged in a given unit of time.</p>
<p>She nodded. It made perfect sense to her.</p>
<p>But the desire to date her friends just wasn’t there.</p>
<p>It wasn’t as though they’d never expressed an interest, in their own ways, but she’d never felt the twinge of romantic reciprocation.</p>
<p>
  <em>Is it because they’re like my sibs? A bunch of weirdos I’d do anything for?</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Have I locked myself out of romance because I love them like family?</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor gripped her head and made a frustrated huff. She needed a distraction from her distraction.</p>
<p>The Racks were always convenient for that sort of thing.</p>
<p>On the way there, Meteor passed a pair of Larimars who glanced furtively at her and tittered once they were out of sight. She glanced at a window for her reflection; thankfully, the fairies had left no mustache or black eye circles on her face. <em>Weird</em>.</p>
<p>Thompson the silent Disc Boy threw her a thumbs-up on her way in. She tossed him one back, as it was only polite. The Racks hosted the usual rank and file; the Round Rack had some activity, so she investigated.</p>
<p>Volt and Frambuesa were engaged in a spar. Last time was a veteran picking a brawl with a few desk-jockey Standard Berets. This time was a lesson. Meteor watched every move.</p>
<p>Frambuesa came at Volt with a combo. Low jab, blocked. Uppercut feint into a high elbow, caught. Knee to open side, tagged. Middle straight, knocked off-course and punished by a battering-ram palm to the chest. She staggered several steps. Some onlookers oohed.</p>
<p>“Again,” the blue ram ordered, lowering his fists to a totally unguarded stance.</p>
<p>Frambuesa dashed to his left, jumped at a right angle, came at him with a kick. He took it low on the forearm, jerked back to dodge her follow-up kick – <em>She used the first impact as a pivot, she knew he’d block!</em> With the force she put into the second kick, though, she was off-balance and off her feet. Volt corrected her by sending her to the floor with a headbutt to her back.</p>
<p>The spectators groaned.</p>
<p>“Explain,” Volt ordered.</p>
<p>“Overcommitted,” Frambuesa groaned into the floor.</p>
<p>“Good. Up.”</p>
<p>“Gimme a sec,” she groaned again.</p>
<p>Volt addressed the crowd. “Mavericks won’t—” he finally spotted Meteor. His sternness evaporated. “Oh. Hi. Just training.”</p>
<p>“Is that so?” Asked Meteor.</p>
<p>Frambuesa pushed herself off the ground. “Told you I’d be back, ma’am.”</p>
<p>“He giving you trouble, Fram?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, and it’s great,” Fram grinned. Part of her face was damaged. The cosmetic, solid white curves in her mouth were broken such that it looked like she was missing a tooth. “I’m learning a lot.”</p>
<p>“A lot of basics,” Volt countered. “But she put in the request. Filled out the right forms. She knew the consequences.”</p>
<p>“Of getting them wrong?”</p>
<p>“Of getting them right,” Volt smiled thinly. “She’ll be passable. Maybe. In four, six, eight months.”</p>
<p>“Two,” Fram smirked as she calculated a new approach.</p>
<p>“Two <em>years</em>,” Volt crossed his arms, somewhat awkwardly for how big they were.</p>
<p>She advanced on him again, but he kept his arms still. He dodged, ducked, turned, fought back with only his legs and his head and an enviable sense of balance. After a few exchanges Fram ducked a horizontal heel and sprang up high, inviting the headbutt that she cross-countered with an elbow. The resounding <em>clang</em> separated them. Meteor joined the applause.</p>
<p>Fram shook her arm out. “Yo Meteor! Tag in?”</p>
<p>“She’s got better things to do than save your butt,” Volt at last uncrossed his arms.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Meteor quipped, “like beating yours.”</p>
<p>The audience murmured approvingly. Fram hurried off to a corner.</p>
<p>“Seriously?” Volt tilted his head. “Again?”</p>
<p>“Totally. C’mon, just a friendly conversation. With punching. We can even teach Fram how to fight a different body type.”</p>
<p>Volt considered it, in his measured way. After a moment he beckoned with a smile.</p>
<p>Some spectators scuttled off to fetch others. Meteor put up her fists and walked over to boxer-tap him.</p>
<p>He kept his hands to himself and opened with a sweep kick.</p>
<p>Meteor just barely cleared it, but his follow-up uppercut scraped the length of her guarding forearm.</p>
<p>“<em>What the heck!</em>”</p>
<p>“Teaching.”</p>
<p>Meteor lit into him, still fists-only. He blocked, parried.</p>
<p>“See you’re no worse off after Spectrod,” she began. “Got worried for a bit!”</p>
<p>A straight right punch sailed over her ducking head and she guarded against a left jab. She went for his abdomen, but he was playing slippery.</p>
<p>“Shouldn’t,” he grunted.</p>
<p>“C’mon, he hit you with your weakness! I know what that’s like!”</p>
<p>“Like this?”</p>
<p>His footwork broke his retreating pattern and came at her chin with a knee.</p>
<p>She jerked to the side, right into the path of his fist, but a backwards dash saved her from it. He lifted his fists again and spoke up to Fram.</p>
<p>“You never know what’ll work best. Try everything.”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Meteor added, “mix it up.”</p>
<p>“Even if you’re afraid to.” He tucked his arms closer to his barrel chest. “Habits are easy. Dangerous. Might make you lose.”</p>
<p>He charged at Meteor, head down, fists up.</p>
<p>Meteor dashed headlong into the world’s shortest game of chicken. Her opponent didn’t waver. Neither did she. At the last possible instant she could have broken off, she threw an uppercut – and was treated to a rare glimpse of her friend’s widened eyes as her fist met his chin.</p>
<p>Time sliced thinly. On the next slice his fist crossed into her shoulder. On the next she was on the other side of him, tumbling away.</p>
<p>“—<em>oof—agh</em>—”</p>
<p>She stopped rolling at the edge of the ring. New spectators groaned that it was over already.</p>
<p>“Understand?” Meteor groaned.</p>
<p>“Think so,” Fram replied.</p>
<p>Meteor looked up and Volt was already there, holding a hand down to her.</p>
<p>“See you’re no worse off after Morpho.”</p>
<p>She took his hand. He hauled her up. She dusted herself off. “Worried for a bit?”</p>
<p>“About you?” He smirked. “Never.”</p>
<p>Round Two went about as well for her. She poured on more dash to let Volt demonstrate how to catch momentum with momentum. Meteor got a nice dent in her chest for her trouble, but Fram’s attentiveness was well worth it. Fram tried the same thing when Volt ran at her, and the hit was clean, but she simply lacked Meteor’s mass and took a trip to the floor.</p>
<p>“Again,” Volt ordered his pupil.</p>
<p><em>She’s getting better. They both are</em>.</p>
<p>Meteor disappeared to hit the sims. Flurry was directing floor-cleaner mechaniloids from the front desk.</p>
<p>“Hey, player,” she greeted without looking up. “Finally got some time to yourself?”</p>
<p>“Oh, some.” Meteor wondered about the nickname.</p>
<p>It was very easy for a Snow Rider to give a side-eye. “How was it? Where’d he take you?”</p>
<p>Meteor rubbed her dent. “To the floor, mostly. Really gave me a pounding, but I think it was educational for everybody.”</p>
<p>“Damn, girl. I mean I thought you could handle him, but…”</p>
<p>“Oh, he’s rough because he cares. Just his body language, so to speak. And hey, I knew what I was getting into.”</p>
<p>Flurry stared at her. “You think he’d give me a shot? Not that I’m trying to get in your way or anything.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Huh. Didn’t know she was into sparring…</em>
</p>
<p>“Yeah, maybe, if you ask him.”</p>
<p>Flurry’s eye drifted slowly upward. She shook her head.</p>
<p>“A-a-anyway, you’re here for sims, right? I’ll hook you up. Preference?”</p>
<p>“Something Class A, but somebody I’ve done a few times before, ‘cause I’ve got some weapons to test out. Palehorse, let’s say.”</p>
<p>“Can do.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Nine spike-knotted cords snaked from his white hand. A mane of razor chains clinked like a prisoner march. <em>Clop, clop, clop</em>, his two hooved feet stepped from the thick smoke of the burning seaside resort.</p>
<p>“Behold, and quake with fear, for I am the Thief of Days, the Ghost of Montana! It was I who made dark the Light of Nevada, I who battled the mighty Rush Chevalski and lived, I who punish the wicked and make wide the world of reploidkind! Weep and bear witness to your end, for you stand before the terror of… <em>Scourge Palehorse!</em>”</p>
<p>Meteor laughed then as loudly as she did when he was alive. “S-sorry, sorry, just, his delivery…”</p>
<p>“Focus,” Flurry advised, “he’s gonna start attacking if you do that.”</p>
<p>“Not if I do first.”</p>
<p>“Dare this feeble challenger <em>make mock of</em>—”</p>
<p>Meteor dashed for him and opened with a thermite splash. His shields flashed, and it was down to business. The thing about solid-wire scourges was that while they hurt like heck, they were difficult to finesse; if they swiped in one direction, they were unlikely to turn. And so it came: swipe one across, swipe two diagonal, swipe three vertical up, and Meteor found the opening to stick her shiny new Ice Zanbato.</p>
<p>The pale horse took the pale blue blade full in the stomach. The effect was weird and almost pretty. The liquid mass of the blade splashed and clung and the lemon-yellow hibeam struck through the blue, gouging horribly and nearly blinding Meteor with shield sparks.</p>
<p>She retreated the heck away, knowing what was coming. A WEAPON-conjured tornado of clanking chains and thrashing flails tore through nothing but air. The first time, which was one of her first times in the Veracruz Sixth, that blender took her arm clean off and scoured her side down to the chassis. Repeated practice against his sim let her learn his patterns.</p>
<p>The problem was that after a big enough hit, he went patternless for the whole rest of the fight.</p>
<p>Palehorse jumped out to a wall, kickjumping off and – <em>Oh heck, here comes the big kusarigama.</em></p>
<p>The Maverick was made of chains and flails and sharp things. They were all just arrows pointing back at him, really.</p>
<p>Meteor planted an Arbor Wall in the chain-sickle’s path. The density of the wood stopped the blade cold; she heard the <em>thunk</em> but didn’t see it, as she was already moving. Palehorse landed with a rattling clanking cacophony and swung a morningstar out of his palm.</p>
<p>Meteor really wished she had her current levels of agility and mobility the first time she’d fought him.</p>
<p>The spiked ball on spiked chains swung a killer arc right over her head as she select her new weapon with the horrible pun name. Spark Hand-Drill whirred to full spin and shed electric arcs even before she fired it.</p>
<p>The grinder drills spread shallower, as advertised, but she could hardly see them through the brightness of the electric triangle. By the time it reached Palehorse the shape was his height. Only one drill made contact, striking him at the knee, but the electricity surged through him and snapped all three lines at once. His body seized up as lightning – his prime weakness – zigzagged between his chains.</p>
<p>Meteor fired again and again, triangle after triangle, keeping her distance and pouring on the damage. The quicker the drills came, the more they grinded against and bounced off his strobing shields.</p>
<p>
  <em>So they don’t chew through shields, good to know… oh heck here comes—</em>
</p>
<p>Not even her agility could outrun the harpoon. It speared into her side and anchored deep with wicked barbs, thankfully painless in the sim.</p>
<p>“<em>Get over here!</em>”</p>
<p>Despite his bluster, Scourge Palehorse was Class A for a reason. He braced his hooves and hauled back on the chain; even her mass meant little to his bestial strength.</p>
<p>He timed the swinging flail to the instant Meteor’s shields quit flashing.</p>
<p>She timed her Prominence to the instant he swung.</p>
<p>Her shields and his tried to out-flash each other, but the fountain of lava made his labor all the worse. Inspiration struck, and so did her greatsaber, but from what she could tell, the cryomer did more damage to the molten metal itself than the body underneath. When the hibeam clicked on, of course, it easily out-damaged the thermite.</p>
<p>Palehorse kicked like a cannonball and went for another flail, but her long yellow blade met his wrist and carved it off. She revved up one more Spark Hand-Drill and drove it home; his chain mane seemed to float out, sparking like a thunderstorm as his core ruptured.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>SIMULATION</p>
<p>C O M P L E T E</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&gt; YOUR RANK: A</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>“Whew.”</p>
<p>“What’s that new one called?” Flurry asked. “The triangle.”</p>
<p>Meteor told her.</p>
<p>Flurry groaned.</p>
<p>“I know, right?” Meteor stepped out of the pod. “But I’m really liking the damage.”</p>
<p>“Didn’t you use to spit lightning?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, Exhalation Beam. I had to combine a couple Mavs to get that. It was great, and it saved my life against Palehorse, but it was pretty high-collateral, know what I mean?”</p>
<p>“Oh yeah.” Flurry patted her arm cannon. “I’ve been trying to build up something like that for me, but it’s tough with my specs.”</p>
<p>“You talk to Skittle about it yet?”</p>
<p>“Might have to. They’re the good kind of crazy. And <em>chatty</em>.” Flurry’s eye became an upward-pointing crescent.</p>
<p>
  <em>Is she… smiling?</em>
</p>
<p>“Yeah, tell me about it. Thanks, Flurry, but I should get going.”</p>
<p>“Sure, sure. Have fun now.”</p>
<p>Meteor began to get the sense that she was missing something. Maybe some joke Skittle was playing. <em>Tsk, that’s just like them.</em></p>
<p>
  <em>Wonder if Monitor’s been warned about their habits yet…</em>
</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>There was a time when Meteor spent at least an hour every day in the Requisitions department, checking out the new gear, asking everyone where things might be improved, and professionally quibbling with Windsor and his team over specifications. She hadn’t had a chance since being booted from Decommissions with good cause. The chance was there now.</p>
<p>The underground garage was never totally quiet. It was there that material shipments come in for assembly, and where vehicles and mechaniloids were delivered, stored, and maintained. Inspection mechaniloids came and went, as did members of the Fourth’s repair crew. Most were green. <em>Monitor should fit right in.</em></p>
<p>At the edge of her well-tuned hearing, Meteor noticed that she was walking in a bubble of lower volume. Anybody she passed by seemed to pause work for just a second.</p>
<p>She finally found Iron Monitor monitoring a line of Raiden ride armors under service. He stepped down the line, evidently finding nothing at fault, until he came to one with half its chest missing.</p>
<p>“What happened here?” He called out to the mechanic.</p>
<p>“Some dinosaur outside Mexico City,” a green Standard Beret with a soulpatch plate called back. “Burned right through. Too bad you weren’t there – you like ‘em hot, don’t you, chief?”</p>
<p>“Har <em>har</em>.”</p>
<p>“Oh shit,” the Standard laughed upon spotting Meteor. He immediately went back to work as Monitor glanced her way.</p>
<p>“Showa! Hey, good to see you.”</p>
<p>“Likewise. You settling in okay?”</p>
<p>“Sure am. Your Req department’s a lot like Darwin’s. Your Fourth, though? Same as everybody’s. Full of characters.”</p>
<p>“I bet. Skittle hasn’t given you a hard time, have they?”</p>
<p>“They gotta wait their turn!” Some heckling Chrysoprase two Raidens down called over. The mechanics failed to stifle their laughter.</p>
<p>
  <em>Yeah, that’ll do.</em>
</p>
<p>“All right, chuckleheads,” Meteor raised her voice as dangerously as a teacher, “what’s going on? It’s like I missed a joke while I was napping. If this involves Skittle <em>in any way</em>…”</p>
<p>Monitor tilted back his head and covered his eyes, an easily task with those big hands. “Yep, same as everybody’s.”</p>
<p>“What’s this about, Monitor?”</p>
<p>He sighed, took his helmet by the beak and lifted it off with a click of magnetic locks. The armor plates between his neck and his pauldrons clicked neatly into concentric curves on his shoulders. His unarmored head was beige and angular like a low-resolution monitor lizard.</p>
<p>“I contacted you through your on-site personnel account. Seelie’s your handler, right? I bet he sent—”</p>
<p>“They.”</p>
<p>“They, sorry. I bet they sent the message to everybody <em>but</em> you.”</p>
<p>“What message?”</p>
<p>“It was short. I asked you out on a date.”</p>
<p>Um.</p>
<p><em>Um</em>.</p>
<p>“Um.”</p>
<p>Monitor went on, completely sincere from the sound of it, and Meteor could only envy his confidence with that sort of thing.</p>
<p>“I like how you look. I like how you work. So I did some research. I like that you came back from the dead. I like that you’ve been non-stop at getting back in shape. I like how you walked into a fistfight with a melee specialist on behalf of a Standard. I like how you fought the guy who killed you – and won. I like strength, Showa, and it might’ve been a quick study, but I haven’t seen a weak line on you yet.”</p>
<p>Meteor took a moment to process. Nobody had ever been so immediately forthcoming. Nobody had ever knocked on her front door. And he was unfamiliar enough to want to investigate…</p>
<p>The mechanics worked in the particular way that anybody worked when they were listening hard yet trying to sound busy.</p>
<p>“You haven’t seen any of my lines for more than an hour, total,” said Meteor.</p>
<p>“Right. Which is why I want to up that total. I know a place – not right now, still got work to clear. But I can take you out tonight if you like. Show you a good time. Hmm?”</p>
<p>Her first instinct was to turn him down, but the entire rest of her brain beat it up and shoved it in a closet.</p>
<p>
  <em>He’s got honesty, diligence, a good voice, rounded corners – what the heck is there to lose, Lieutenant?</em>
</p>
<p>“Tonight, huh?”</p>
<p>“If you’re not working, that is. The way you’ve been at it I bet you could knock out another mission.”</p>
<p>“You bet, hmm?” Meteor smirked.</p>
<p>“Safely, I think,” his voice smiled much better than his face could.</p>
<p>“In that case, I’ll pick my next and head out. If I’m back as quick as you think, I’ll go wherever you take me.”</p>
<p>Iron Monitor put his helmet back on. His neck armor clicked back up to meet it. “Deal. But you should know I’ve changed deployment a little.”</p>
<p>“Oh? Is it still a point-buy?”</p>
<p>“I’ll show you.” He gestured ahead. “Right this way.”</p>
<p>Monitor kept it professional on the short walk. He didn’t stay at Meteor’s side, didn’t go for a too-familiar touch, didn’t even try “escorting” her. Bonus points on all counts. Meteor might have been old-fashioned, but as far as she was concerned there were levels of friendliness to go through in order, and he didn’t overstep. Whether it was by practice or instinct, she couldn’t tell, but she was feeling confident about the date already.</p>
<p>Monitor took her to a requisition terminal by the mechaniloid storage wing, a device not unlike the one where she signed out for the joyride with the moth-fairy twins. It had additional monitor space to read tech specs for each deployable unit.</p>
<p>“You’re cleared to access the system from any terminal,” said Montior, “but this is how it’s laid out. New standard. I’ll use me as an example.”</p>
<p>He logged in; his displayed rank was A. A bar at the top was subdivided into seventy segments. “Functionality’s the same, but now the queue interface is right up front. So if you have your heart set on bringing some Aclandas but they’re all taken, you don’t have to go down five sub-pages.”</p>
<p>“Nice. Why are the last twenty points a different color?”</p>
<p>“Earned for repeated good use of the first fifty. Not that I brought them all back in one piece, but that I used them smartly.”</p>
<p>“Double nice.”</p>
<p>“There’s also a recommendations box you can toggle on or off. It crunches environmental and enemy data for you, based on the mission. Here’s one on my roster…”</p>
<p>He selected a Maverick named Fallout Geigeroach who was apparently holed up in a radioactive exclusion zone in West Virginia. Site data mentioned mountains, environmental hazards, and a single target with outlaws and stolen/hijacked mechaniloids. Recommendations for deployable mechaniloids popped up: Head Gunners, Helits, Drimoles, Mad Bulls, Crusher Neos, Giga Deaths…</p>
<p>“Heavy on the obstacle-breaking,” Meteor observed.</p>
<p>“Not that I wouldn’t go that direction, of course, but it saves a little time sorting alphabetically.”</p>
<p> “Efficient. I like it.”</p>
<p>“Thought you might. And if you want sapient help, the squad register is one tab away.”</p>
<p>“Good to know. What kind of rank-and-file do you tend to pick?”</p>
<p>“Standard Berets, if they’re available. Their specs are outstanding, don’t you think?”</p>
<p>“I do like high specs.” Meteor on-purpose-accidentally sidled closer to him to close out the requisition screen. “I’ll play more with it in the command room. Guess I’d better get to work.”</p>
<p>“Guess so.”</p>
<p>“Guess I’ll see you tonight, then.”</p>
<p>“Guess you will.”</p>
<p>Meteor tried her best to clamp down her smile on her way out.</p>
<p>Two steps out into the hall, a thought stopped her cold.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>“<em>Oh-doubleyou-enn-zero-one</em> <em>Scatter SEELIE!</em>”</p>
<p>The nurses wisely got out of Meteor’s way.</p>
<p>“<em>Get your fluttery Welsh butt out here!</em>”</p>
<p>“I-I-I’m sorry ma’am,” Dee Sub One intervened, “they went back to Sixteenth’s tower to grab some materials!”</p>
<p>“Uh-<em>huh</em>. And by ‘back to Sixteenth’s tower’ do you mean ‘hiding under the desk?’”</p>
<p>“We swear, Lieutenant,” said another nurse, “Their Highness and Their Grace left right after you did!”</p>
<p>“Oh doesn’t that just figure. Fine. I just need somebody to get my dents out. But while I’m here, I think I’ll visit their little lab anyway. Who here wants to help me prank Their Highness?”</p>
<p>Every right hand in the room shot up.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>“Oh, there you are.” Nouveau looked over from Turtle’s chair in the command room. “I gather from your face that you’ve heard about your breach of privacy?”</p>
<p>“Heard and seen and gotten even,” Meteor dusted off her hands.</p>
<p>“Do tell,” he swiveled the chair, one leg propped on his knee. “Nothing against regulations?”</p>
<p>“Nothing much. Just a little thank-you. I found the audio tap to their upgrade lab and replaced everything on their playlist with <em>Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies</em>.”</p>
<p>Nouveau covered his eyes and laughed. “You’re letting them off too lightly, Meteor.”</p>
<p>“Maybe so. I’m just feeling in a good mood.”</p>
<p>“It must be infectious,” he tucked some hair behind his pointed earcap. “Turtle’s actually in her office. <em>Jaguar’s</em> old office. Methinks seeing fraternization among the ranks gave her a nudge.”</p>
<p>“Great,” Meteor groaned as she headed to the central terminal. “Can’t wait for the unsolicited relationship advice.”</p>
<p>Her remaining roster made the choice simple: one or the other.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:<br/>“Los Mortales”</p>
<p>Los Mortales, “the Deadly Ones,” were a group of eight S-Rank Maverick Hunters commissioned in the early days of the organization by Commander Valdivieso. They were notorious for a brutal, zealous, and unflinching maximum-force view of Maverick hunting.</p>
<p>RUSH CHEVALSKI: Chivalrous Polish armored centaur. Joined Repliforce in the initial recruitment phase; served in wartime as General’s aide-de-camp. Retired by a Geneva 4th officer.</p>
<p>CRASH CORMORANT: Japanese brawling seabird. Especially brutal, known for keeping trophies of his retired enemies. Attempted to assassinate Colonel but was slain by him.</p>
<p>KRIEG EULER: German-made missile-barrage owl. Obsessive strategist. Currently serving as Base Commander of HQ5.</p>
<p>HOTFOOT RABBIT: Heat-type consummate professional of American make. Joined Repliforce in the initial recruitment phase. His corpse was found outside HQ4 six hours after General’s declaration of independence, evidently retired by high-yield beam sabers.</p>
<p>GLACE REQUIN: Glory-seeking French ice shark. Slain early in the Repliforce War when he attempted a decapitation strike against the Repliforce Navy in Sri Lanka – solo.</p>
<p>FLASH REZADOR: Spanish praying mantis considered by all accounts to be among the three highest-skilled beam saber specialists in history. Whereabouts unknown.</p>
<p>DREADBOLT SKUNK: American; acid-type. Coped with years of service by becoming a substance abuser. Committed suicide upon Valdivieso’s death of old age.</p>
<p>SHADE TANUKI: Honorable Japanese espionage expert. Left service entirely upon Rabbit and Chevalski joining Repliforce. Whereabouts unknown, likely never to be discovered.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Mission 8: Chaser Girtabomb</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Meteor pondered over her remaining two Mavericks.</p>
<p>Chaser Girtabomb’s mugshot, silver skin under purple carapace armor, grinned with a taunting handsomeness. Sounding Humpback’s single eye set in a storm-gray hull seemed to judge her.</p>
<p>“Hey Nouveau?”</p>
<p>“Yes?”</p>
<p>“You were a fan of Girtabomb’s, right?”</p>
<p>“Until the instant he turned. Don’t put him off on my account. Deco and her people determined that every one of the R-series mechaniloids you’ve faced have come from his factory.”</p>
<p>“Well not anymore.” Meteor stretched her fingers for effect before tapping the scorpion-man’s mugshot.</p>
<p>A comms ping on the central map immediately lit up. Nouveau hummed a satisfied syllable, pivoted his seat back around and patched it in.</p>
<p>An off-model Cabochon-type reploid with the high-standing collar and gorget armor of a bomb squad blinked into view. She was yellow and orange and her helmet was lined with rivets.</p>
<p>“Citrine, Columbus First Advance,” she greeted, gruff and snappy. “You the retiring officer for Girtabomb?”</p>
<p>“I am,” said Meteor.</p>
<p>“<em>Ugh</em>, finally,” Citrine rolled her neck. “My company’s been clamping the site in place since the quake. Venezuela’s backed its people off, but Mexico’s been helping, and not just by sending you. Better gird yourself, this one’ll be a bitch.”</p>
<p>“Already girding. But shouldn’t we speak in person?”</p>
<p>“No, that’ll spoil the plan. Which is this.”</p>
<p>Citrine’s image blinked to a satellite map as she narrated points of interest that blinked when she mentioned them.</p>
<p>“Repliforce is present in strength, along with your mark. They’re holding a corner of Maracaibo, centered on a manufacturing plant here. The influence also covers the Maracaibo Speedway, which runs across the narrow part of the lake <em>here</em>, to the Isla de Providencia <em>here</em>, then down to the Hipodromo de Santa Rita <em>here</em>. The quake broke a lot of it and is making the plant operate at half capacity.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, that was me,” Meteor admitted. “Load-bearing Maverick in a cave system.”</p>
<p>“Nice,” Citrine audibly grinned.</p>
<p>“I heard about the collateral…”</p>
<p>“Don’t worry about it, they can rebuild, but the wreckage is making Girtabomb patrol more. Me and my personal squad will hit one side or the other – either infil from the city or ride in from Santa Rita. The choice is yours, because wherever we come from, he’ll speed in to meet us.” Her face returned. “That’ll leave you to enter from the other side, catch up, and put his lights out.”</p>
<p>“So essentially I’m choosing where to fight him.”</p>
<p>“Provided that we hold out long enough to keep him there. Not that I doubt us,” she pointed at the camera with a thickly armored hand, “but he’s a real nasty jock. Understand me: that plant is full of custom heavy assault mechaniloids, but he’s still the most dangerous mobile in the area. He built his whole career on beating the hell out of people at high speed.”</p>
<p>“What’s he packing?”</p>
<p>Citrine blinked. “Not a fan of Battle and Chase, are you?”</p>
<p>“To her detriment,” Nouveau muttered.</p>
<p>“Not really,” Meteor confirmed.</p>
<p>Citrine glanced down and keyed in something out of frame. “That might actually help. Let you go in without preconceptions.”</p>
<p>Weapon schematics took up a column on the left side of the projection, each a rotating graphic. “See, his arsenal in the races was sticky bombs, energy bullets, and those claws – your basic three-range coverage – but he’s playing for real now. We’ve confirmed a whole damn ice cream shop of variable payloads on his stickies, and that tail gun is up to anti-air quality. Plus, his legs and underbelly can transform into a ride chaser with Adion-type saber skates firing on a dash. Real fond of hit and run.”</p>
<p>“Which he couldn’t really bring to bear if we cornered him in the plant,” Meteor thought aloud.</p>
<p>“The plant full of speedy damn heavies for backup, yes.”</p>
<p>Meteor rubbed her lower lip. “See your point.”</p>
<p>“So. Pick your entry and any deployment, then give us ten minutes to set up. After that, we’re a go as soon as you land.”</p>
<p>Meteor opened another tab in the main terminal and went to her deployment menu. Monitor had done well to streamline the process; she had fifty points to spend on vehicles, mechaniloids, and reploid subordinates. The heavier and faster they were, the more they cost. While she thought about deployments, Meteor brought up a view of the plant: two main buildings and a lot of pavement. The quake had cracked the roof on one of them. She didn’t relish the idea of fighting a pro indoors with piles of other hostiles.</p>
<p>“Citrine – oh, sorry, what was your officer rank?”</p>
<p>“Doesn’t matter. Now listen, what’ll it be?”</p>
<p>“Come at him from the speedway. Draw him out.” She kept talking as she selected support options; fortunately all reploids could multitask. “What’s your team’s composition?”</p>
<p>Citrine sounded like she was moving. “We’re called <em>In Control</em>. Raul, Turbo, Gambler, Kilroy. Three Cabochons, one Standard Beret. Busters, sabers, gonna approach on Adions. And me, I blow shit up.”</p>
<p>“Nice.” Meteor spoke her selections as she finalized them, filling her deployment bar to full. “I’m deploying a Chrysoprase team and a Crusher with ridealong Gabyoalls. And a Cheval ride chaser.”</p>
<p>“It’ll work.”</p>
<p>“Counting on it. Just get their eyes turned to you and their backs to me.”</p>
<p>“Can do. We’ve been harassing him a while, getting him mad. He sees us on the road, he’ll be there with friends, guaranteed.”</p>
<p>“Stay safe out there.”</p>
<p>Citrine barked a laugh. “We’re First Advance. Safe’s not our bag. Citrine out.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Right. Ten minutes, she said…</em>
</p>
<p>“Chrysoprases?” Nouveau asked. “You’re sure?”</p>
<p>“I’m sure. I like air support, but they won’t be as big a help indoors.”</p>
<p>“As you like. Just don’t get bogged down, Lieutenant. You’re there for Girtabomb, not to raze the foundations.”</p>
<p>“Right.”</p>
<p>She contacted Requisitions. Monitor’s face appeared.</p>
<p>“Monitor here. Already processed. Gear’s moving out.”</p>
<p>“Excellent. Good work on streamlining all this.”</p>
<p>“Appreciate it. Out.”</p>
<p>Meteor then contacted the Logistics department. Volt’s face appeared.</p>
<p>“Volt!” She smiled. “You’re actually at your desk!”</p>
<p>“Fram learned enough. Questions?”</p>
<p>“I wanted to confer with the team I’m deploying.”</p>
<p>“They’re in transit. My top aide’s already coordinating onsite. Patching.”</p>
<p>Volt’s image switched to that of a helmetless Larimar with a pair of braids bunned up in the style of ram horns.</p>
<p>“Lieutenant Showa,” she saluted. “I’m Sinewave, logistics. Your packages are on the way, ee-tee-ay five minutes.”</p>
<p>“Good. The trigger’s pulled once I’m down, so I want everything ready.”</p>
<p>“Yes ma’am. Oh, the team’s here.”</p>
<p>“Wave them over, I want a word.”</p>
<p>She did so. Three smartly-polished Chrysoprases stepped into frame.</p>
<p>“Lieutenant,” the middle one greeted, distinct from the others by having yellow hands instead of white. “Here to serve. Name’s Bakker, that’s Murphy and Shock. I understand we’re on a tight timetable?”</p>
<p>“The tightest. We’re rolling out the second I’m there.”</p>
<p>“That’s what we like to hear, ma’am. What’s the ground plan?”</p>
<p>“I need to get on the speedway, but that plant is one big obstacle. You listening, Sinewave?”</p>
<p>“Yes ma’am.”</p>
<p>“Good. Here’s what I need from all of you…”</p>
<p>Meteor centered herself. The pressures of the mission prep surged through her mind and spun turbines that energized her spirit. She hadn’t led a significant deployment in a while but found herself slotting smoothly back into the role.</p>
<p>“Mobility is key. Don’t get bogged down, but don’t get surprised. Watch where you’re moving – don’t let the environment do the enemy’s job for them. When something engages, take it down hard and fast – which means build or hold charge every second you’re not firing – but don’t look for new targets that aren’t right in our way and <em>for goodness’ sake</em> don’t chase them. I’ll take point, so stay within four or five meters of me at all times. Copy?”</p>
<p>“Copy,” three voices replied as one.</p>
<p>“Good. Now, which of you’s the best rider?”</p>
<p>Murphy, his arms painted with red racing stripes, raised his hand. Bakker and Shock both thumbed over at him.</p>
<p>“Murphy, right? I’ve got a ride chaser and a couple Gabyoalls coming. Keep the bike warm and the spinners stowed with you. Once your friends and I cut a path to the other side, follow fast – same rules of engagement – and hand the bike and luggage off to me. I’ll ride out and finish what First starts. Once I go, all of you retreat to the speedway. Sinewave? When they’re on it, send the Crusher to break the road so ground units can’t follow. After that? Everybody keep safe. Copy?”</p>
<p>“Copy,” four voices replied as one.</p>
<p><em>Oh yeah, this is the stuff</em>.</p>
<p>“Right. That’s all. Prep and stand by.”</p>
<p>She closed all the contacts. Nouveau sat back, leg propped.</p>
<p>“Well appointed. Good hunting, Lieutenant.”</p>
<p>“Thanks, Captain.”</p>
<p>Meteor headed to the teleport room. Waiting was the hardest part. She tried not to second-guess herself as she stared at the waiting pad. Allied lives were at stake, blameless strangers who were trusting her not to make a bad call. Lives were always at stake in the big picture, but having them right there, with faces and names, drove the point home.</p>
<p>Arc Morpho’s taunt echoed in her anxiety. “<em>So easy to blaze ahead like a gambler on a roll when the only one at risk is you. When all you can lose is time and money</em>.”</p>
<p>Meteor frowned at her reflection in a terminal screen<em>. I’m failing at not-second-guessing, aren’t I.</em></p>
<p>
  <em>Yep.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>All right, Lieutenant, none of that. You’ve got this. </em>
</p>
<p>“Showa,” Citrine pinged. “Ready.”</p>
<p>“Beaming. Roll out.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor landed at a Hunter-occupied street corner café. The windows were blown out, and as she hustled to the exit she saw the walls and street were cracked by earthquake damage. Murphy was already in the Cheval’s seat. Both Gabyoalls were fixed to the ride chaser’s sides, ready to spin. Bakker and Shock looked to her expectantly.</p>
<p>She tapped her earcap. “Showa to Fifth.”</p>
<p>“Yeeeo, Atajo here. Sorry I was bogged the other day, you’ve got my full attention now.”</p>
<p>“Thanks. Signals?”</p>
<p>“Clear as a bell. Columbus First is on the way and somebody… ah, yep, the scorpion’s already moving on intercept for ‘em.”</p>
<p>Meteor’s right hand disappeared into her buster. “Perfect! <em>Let’s go!</em>”</p>
<p>She ran down the street, Bakker and Shock close at her sides, the three of them making a humming harmony of buster charges. They found very quickly that the forward “base” was at the edge of the Repliforce zone. A city block and a cracked four-lane road lay between them and the first of the plant buildings. A phenomenally unlucky Standard Beret was standing beside his Raiden, training a pair of binoculars 90 degrees away.</p>
<p>Meteor pointed her arm. “Light ‘em up!”</p>
<p>Her big blue buster blast led the way for the Chrysoprases’ green plasma comets.</p>
<p>The Standard swept to his right to spot her. A Death Guardian blazed around the Raiden from behind and covered the pilot with its giant shield. A Gabyoall spun out of a crack in the road and zigzagged around.</p>
<p>“Outstanding,” Meteor grumbled as the defense mechaniloid covered the Standard climbing into the seat. “Flanking, charge only!”</p>
<p>“Roger!” The duo chimed.</p>
<p>She spat a Meteor Melter grenade, which the Death Guardian dutifully took dead center. As its shield melted it moved out of the way for the Raiden to dash for her, its gauntlet sabers alight.</p>
<p>He telegraphed a punch-stab that Meteor deftly side-hopped, and for his trouble she introduced him to her Zanbato. The cryomer splashed like instant-set glue and the hi-beam blade sank straight in. She swung it out through the ride armor’s hip. The beleaguered Death Guardian blocked Bakker’s charge shot but took Shock’s as Meteor jumped and slashed and retired the Raiden and its rider.</p>
<p>“Holy <em>heck</em> I like this sword.”</p>
<p>“Spinner!” Bakker whipped out his low-phase saber and took a swipe at the Gabyoall he jumped over. The beam sparked right off it. A Melter grenade did to the little annoyance what few weapons could, leaving a splat of slag and halted blades on the road.</p>
<p>The Chrysoprases’ crossfire took out the shieldless Death Guardian, and on they went.</p>
<p>“Movement inside,” Atajo warned.</p>
<p>“Heading to a garage – paint says Fourteen.”</p>
<p>“Would you believe that’s exactly where I’m seeing it?”</p>
<p>The two Giga Death-Rs dashing out of the garage with two Hover Gunners following above prevented a snappy rejoinder.</p>
<p>“<em>Focus right!</em>” Meteor yelled.</p>
<p>She needed high damage, so she gave her new VWES entry a spin while her Prominence charged up. The bits of Spark Hand-Drill flew, bridged by lightning in a killer triangle. The rightmost Giga Death opened fire and took more than it gave from her and her squadmates. One drill smashed into a missile, cutting the triangle into a single line which clotheslines the big mechaniloid across the forehead and continued past to grind out one Hover Gunner’s solid shots. Meteor dashed in, leapt another missile volley, and landed spewing lava.</p>
<p>“Behind you!” Bakker shouted.</p>
<p>Meteor jumped like a salmon and let a missile sail under her. The sound of charged plasma striking metal and exploding let her know the Chrysoprases were looking out for her. She landed, pivoted, knelt, dashed, and as Giga Death #2 turned to focus on them, she came in with her Gaia Sword and carved into its side. Like her Zanbato in reverse, the bulk of the damage via beam came first, gouging a sparking rent into which the stake stabbed deep and set it exploding.</p>
<p>The remaining Hover Gunner hovered toward her, but a charged shot from a side angle smashed it out of the sky.</p>
<p>“Woo!” Shock pumped his buster in the air. “Gotcha covered!”</p>
<p>“Thanks, Hunter,” she grinned. “Atajo, next?”</p>
<p>“Garage leads to an assembly line. Reading a <em>bunch</em> of bodies. Some even on the walls.”</p>
<p>“You heard the man,” she announced.</p>
<p>The squad entered the garage. If Meteor had a beating heart, it would have stopped.</p>
<p>Offline Giga Deaths slept up on hydraulic lifts, placidly recharging. The room was lined with them. She stepped lightly yet quickly. The room ended with a big opening into an assembly line where Mecha-Arms put Victoroids together, piece by piece.</p>
<p>“Orders?” Shock asked.</p>
<p>“We just took out the bedroom guards. Let ‘em sleep.”</p>
<p>“Nooooo problem, ma’am.”</p>
<p>She saw movement much closer. Bakker acted instantly.</p>
<p>“<em>Hostile!</em>”</p>
<p>He released a charge shot underneath a lift. A poor innocent Scriver took the compressed green plasma between the eyes and exploded, sending its screwdriver nose pirouetting through the air – and bouncing off a Giga Death’s forehead.</p>
<p>The lift lowers. The mechaniloid’s eyes lit up.</p>
<p>Meteor charged up a Prominence. “Well you’re not wrong <em>now</em>…”</p>
<p>“Sorry!”</p>
<p>She waste no time in utterly whaling on the groggy mechaniloid. The ice of the Zanbato paved the way for a Prominence to eat into its hull, which she contained in the loving embrace of an Arbor Wall to keep its parts from causing a chain-wakeup reaction.</p>
<p>“Darn it, Bakker,” she snapped, “not everything in here is going to be worthy of shooting down. Prioritize and move on, got it?”</p>
<p>“Yes ma’am, won’t happen again ma’am.”</p>
<p>“Good.” Meteor planted another Arbor Wall, just at her feet. “Here. Anything that attacks this plank is fair game. Okay?”</p>
<p>“Understood ma’am.”</p>
<p>She cut the base off the floor with a sweep of her Gaia Sword, caught the plank as it tilted and held it at a flat angle. She set her feet, turned her torso, spat a spoonful of thermite on the big slab to touch it off, and hurled it flaming into the next room.</p>
<p>Pea-shooter busters and half a dozen wheel-shaped Spiky mechaniloids perforate it before it even stopped sliding. Two Victoroid Custom-Rs, racing stripes and all, dashed in and shoulder-smashed each other through the flames.</p>
<p>She reignited the Gaia Sword.</p>
<p>“The wood has spoken. Smash and dash!”</p>
<p>The assembly line facility was a long room that reminded her of the logging plant. It lacked giant saws, but had similar manipulators, Caterkillers on the ceiling, and <em>of course</em> the dumb Vic-Pinks. Two Knot Berets charged down the row from either side as the Spiky wheels started to turn.</p>
<p>Meteor jumped and twisted over the Victoroids’ buster fire. The Caterkiller above her had poor timing; its oblong short-range energy balls missed her comfortably. She landed dashing, but the right Vic intercepted, tackling yet without enough momentum to shove her more than a meter. She gave it a navel piercing with the Gaia Sword, turned her head and Melter-spat the left one’s launcher face off. She switched to her Sparkdrills and uppercut the pierced Victoroid, hammer-grinding her arm straight in after the cyberwood stake. Its friend recovered, aimed at her – but turned on its heel to aim for Bakker.</p>
<p>There was no time to withdraw her arm, but plenty of reaction time to fire her dash and pretend she was Volt.</p>
<p>Meteor wore the all-but-dead Victoroid like a boxing glove and smashed it into its partner, revving her Sparkdrill fist and firing it to destroy them both.</p>
<p>Through the blast of dual explosions she heard Shock cry out.</p>
<p>He had been grabbed by a Mecha-Arm. It carried him over to another arm that stretches out for his legs.</p>
<p>Meteor hopped on the assembly line and sabered him free. He fell to the floor just as a wave of Spikys rolled in.</p>
<p>She started to warn, “Bak—”</p>
<p>Bakker ran in, saber in hand, and made short work of the killer wheels. The Knot Berets had already been taken care of.</p>
<p>“Dang,” she approved.</p>
<p>Bakker charged his buster. “We’re fast learners, ma’am,” he smiled politely before shooting down a Caterkiller on the wall.</p>
<p>Meteor led the charge down the assembly line. It curved around a corner and took armless Victoroid bodies with it, but she wasn’t headed that way. Some clever jerks piled crates in her way, and it took a moment to break through them to make an expedient path for Murphy to take later. The Caterkillers crawling down the makeshift barricades and the Knot Berets tossing bombs from the top of the stacks added a few seconds to the task, but Bakker and Shock were glad to stand back and fire.</p>
<p>“What’s ahead, Atajo?” She asked over the shooting.</p>
<p>“Next building looks like vehicle construction. Ride armors, some chasers if you take the scenic route. But I’m getting power signatures from a swath of ‘em – guys hopping in for a ride all over you.”</p>
<p>“Copy.” She fired a Melter grenade right up into a Knot’s belly and switched channels. “Citrine, status?”</p>
<p>“Girding. Speedway’s a big one, but we’re both closing the gap, us and him. Once you’re on the road we’ll bomb our end and retreat, so don’t leave us hanging. Not that we can’t handle it,” she added, defensively.</p>
<p>“Meteor?” Atajo chimed in. “Girtabomb’s activating competition-mode traps behind him. Just a heads-up when you hit that part.”</p>
<p>“Lovely.” She blasted through the last crate and move on. The three Hunters had each taken a ding, but only that. Meteor rode her confidence as she ran outside.</p>
<p>“Let’s pick it up,” she ordered, “I don’t want to leave First out there longer than I have to.”</p>
<p>“Roger,” the Chrysoprases replied. They didn’t have dash systems equipped, so Meteor kept to an unassisted run.</p>
<p>The resistance to the next building was hardly worth the name: just another wave of Spikys in staggered formation. As they engaged, the Hunters caught sight of the same twinkles in the sky.</p>
<p>Agile as Meteor’s big body was, and light as her subordinates were, none of them were fast enough to evade all of the six hostile-seeking energy shots.</p>
<p>The blue-painted Eagle ride armors hovered in for a pincer, feathering the thrusters to stay airborne as long as they could. They were accompanied by a Death Guardian and a Hover Gunner each.</p>
<p>“<em>North first!</em>” She pointed to one of the Eagles with her Melter rocket’s red glare, angled her buster and followed the grenade with a Sparkdrill. The Death Guardian took the thermite burst for its master, but the spread of the three drill bits expanded the electric triangle enough to pass a line of lightning straight over it to damage the Eagle.</p>
<p>She seeded two Arbor Walls just in time for Bakker and Shock to hide behind them. Hover Gunner bullets pelted the wood as the Eagles fire again.</p>
<p>In a totally different context, Meteor would have loved the Eagles’ cannons. Their secondary charge launched tiny homing bits wreathed in plasma until they overloaded, which gave them the appearance of enemy-seeking comets and prompted the inaccurate nickname “Homing Buster.” They rendered cover essentially useless.</p>
<p>Luckily the two green soldiers realized that and booked it out once they heard the shots. With the benefit of not being ambushed, they dodged, return fire, and managed to take out the Death Guardian with the melted shield. The Eagles’ shots didn’t even come near Meteor. She felt a little insulted.</p>
<p>She dashed to one of the walls, hopped up, kickdashed off and showed the slow-descending Eagle what she thought of its sense of priorities. The pilot guarded himself with the ride armor’s forearm, which took her thermite splash with a blink of shields. Meteor grabbed hold of its waist, produced another grinder drill and rammed it under the armor’s chest. Her weight threw off its balance and the damage made it impossible to aim for her as it plummeted.</p>
<p>“One, two…”</p>
<p>Meteor time out the drill, yanked it free and fired southward before it use more than one shot of WEAPON energy. She let go and landed, letting the north Eagle crash and burn. The Sparkdrill triangle expanded to the opposing Eagle’s height by the time one of the arcs struck it.</p>
<p>With Bakker and Shock focusing on the one big target left, the opportunistic northern Hover Gunner fired in Meteor’s blind spot. She swung around and activated her new toy, the Repulsor Wing, for the first time; a butterfly-shaped energy shield spread its wings from the subtle projector mounted on her left arm. It took the Gunner’s shots and she shot the annoyance down with a boring buster double-tap.</p>
<p>The southern Eagle dropped to the ground of its own free will and dashed for Shock while the southern Death Guardian covered it from Bakker’s fire. Shock, to Meteor’s amazement, <em>cartwheeled</em> over to one of the Arbor Walls, and in two blinks of an eye he was on top and leaping from it with his saber out.</p>
<p>He landed in the cockpit and drove the saber into the pilot’s neck with all his weight. He forward-flipped out as the Standard started sparking from the wound.</p>
<p>Meteor put the pilot out of his misery with a follow-up charge shot. The Eagle crumpled into explosions. Bakker finished off the hovering mechaniloids.</p>
<p>“And this was <em>out</em>side,” Meteor noted. “Well done, but stay alert.”</p>
<p>“Yes ma’am,” they chorused.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Knot Berets and Spikys rolled out to say hello on the two-story assembly line of the vehicle construction facility. The equipment looked not repurposed but new; there might have been some repair on Battle &amp; Chase competitors done there before, but under Repliforce it was a hive, the corners of the assembly line fitted not to efficiency but the confines of the building for easier defense. The retrofit must have been difficult…</p>
<p>Meteor refocused. She wasn’t there to be impressed, and Repliforce’s initial enemy offering was nothing impressive. Between three Charge Busters, the three Hunters blazed their trail to a curve of the production floor. A Raiden awaited, but charged shots and thermite showed it who was the boss.</p>
<p>Meteor exalted in the ease of it all. She remembered exactly why she’d denied herself deployment aid so often: to free it up for others. Charging through the plant, she knew more than ever that she was right to do so. How many lives had she saved that way?</p>
<p>Her beautiful satellite soldiers and their quick-charging busters even make taking out the next Raiden in their way a freaking breeze. A Death Guardian pet tried to provide floating cover, but her Melter rocket chew through its shield and exposed the ride armor to a triple crossfire.</p>
<p>“It’s a lot easier one by one!” Bakker laughed.</p>
<p>“Don’t give ‘em ideas!” Shock clipped him upside the helmet.</p>
<p>“How we doing, Atajo?” Meteor asked.</p>
<p>“More signals at the bike wing than around you. See what the straight and narrow gets you?” He teased.</p>
<p>“Preaching to the choir there,” she replied. She switched channels. “Murphy, get moving, we’re almost at the switchoff.”</p>
<p>“Copy!”</p>
<p>“Hostiles!” Shock warned. Crash Roaders, little more than boar heads on two big wheels, sped across the floor. Meteor shot Fluid Lockdown over the floor and let them spin out and crash. Shock laughed at the sight.</p>
<p>Immediately ahead stood a long rectangular garage door.</p>
<p>“Big loading zone ahead,” Atajo confirmed. “Conveyors, Knots, only one active ride armor.”</p>
<p>“No sweat.”</p>
<p>“Showa!” Citrine commed. “Maverick sighted, engaging!”</p>
<p>
  <em>Okay, maybe a little sweat.</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor activated the door panel. The long horizontal slats rolled up and out of the way.</p>
<p>“Just hold out, Citrine, we’ll be straight through! One Raiden to go!”</p>
<p>It wasn’t a Raiden.</p>
<p>Black, white, gray. Half again the size. Claws the size of Meteor’s legs were held at the ready.</p>
<p>The pilot watched hustling Knot Berets load crates onto truck beds. His white peaked Navy cap turned with his glance. His mad grin hooked over his yellow jawplate beard.</p>
<p>“Well well well…”</p>
<p>The BB-02 Badger ride armor, a variant of the Brown Bear, trundled around. The familiar pilot’s slung-back shoulder mortars bounced a little with his epaulettes.</p>
<p>“So he wasn’t a liar after all. The Fire Fish of Veracruz, back from the dead! And with rank and file, too!”</p>
<p>“Captain Decim.” She charged her buster; Bakker and Shock followed suit. “The Twelfth outpost wasn’t enough for you? Teaming up with a Maverick wasn’t enough?”</p>
<p>“Nothing’s ever enough for Repliforce,” he crossed his arms. “For the Revolution. We’re one and the same, now, us and the Mavericks. General never understood.”</p>
<p>“Then there’s only one way this ends.”</p>
<p>“That’s right!” Decim sat lower in his seat. The Badger’s claws flexed. The Knots behind him finished loading a truck and scrambled aboard. “It ends with the future in <em>our</em> hands!”</p>
<p>“<em>Distance!</em>” Meteor shouted.</p>
<p>Bakker and Shock split off and fired as she released her charge shot. The blue comet struck and blinked the ride armor’s shields, but Decim swatted down the green ones.</p>
<p>
  <em>The claws are immune to buster fire. Freaking great.</em>
</p>
<p>The truck departed as Decim sped the Badger for Meteor. She obeyed her own order and dashed for distance while popping out a pair of Remote Koi. The ride armor damaged a bit of the floor in a scything swipe. Her fish zeroed in on him and opened fire on the shoulders.</p>
<p>“Not this time!” Decim taunted.</p>
<p>His mortars flipped forward and blasted high-yield plasma cannonballs – but with Asagi’s DNA in them, the Ginrin Showas were just too dodgy. They lasered him even as he fired ineffectually.</p>
<p>Bakker and Shock tag-teamed another pair of charged shots. The Badger scooped a chunk of floor, dash-pivoted and hurled it at Bakker by the loading conveyors. He saw it coming and made dodging look easy, but the geography gave him only two directions and Decim fired on both. The left busterball set off Bakker’s shields, stunning him and making for easy prey.</p>
<p>Meteor wouldn’t have it.</p>
<p>She whipped out the Zanbato and dashed for the Badger, but its dash was worlds better than hers. It escaped her, and even her koi had trouble keeping up. She chased it with a Melter rocket joined by Shock’s charged shot, but neither hit slowed the behemoth.</p>
<p>The Badger’s claws swatted Bakker across the room. He ragdolled into a wall, sparking heavily from rends in his arm, leg, and torso. It was a miracle that his left-side limbs were still attached.</p>
<p>“Bakker!” Shock cried out.</p>
<p>The Badger showed wear but stood firm. Decim laughed and dashed his mighty ride armor at Meteor.</p>
<p>“Get filleted, Fire Fish!”</p>
<p>She was faster than before, but no way was she faster than a ride armor’s dash.</p>
<p>She sacrificed the fish in two Hanabi bursts, grabbed her main saber and stood her ground.</p>
<p>The Badger’s dash added force to its claw-swing. Meteor raised the Repulsor Wing shield. Claw met wing and clashed in an energy-sparking cacophony as Meteor countered with a stab. Ice flashed over the Badger’s belly and chest as Decim dashed backwards, well clear of the yellow plasma.</p>
<p>Decim laughed despite his ride armor starting to smoke.</p>
<p>“What’s the matter? Scared of <em>blades</em>—”</p>
<p>Shock’s charged shot smacked Decim in the neck. He grunted under the blink of his own shields. Shock himself guarded his fellow Chrysoprase, who hadn’t yet gotten up.</p>
<p>Decim growled. The Badger dashed for the incredibly outclassed green reploids.</p>
<p>
  <em>They’re dead without me.</em>
</p>
<p>Her boots blazing behind her, her throat burning with charged energy, Meteor fired a seed low on the Badger’s leg. How it knew the difference between floor and armored foot was beyond her, but it sprang out roots that clutched and crushed in every direction. Including down.</p>
<p>The clawing cyberwood veered the Badger’s dash into a loading conveyor on the far side. Shock hauled Bakker outdoors, firing basic shots as he retreated. Meteor dropped another seed ahead of her, jumped on and sprang off of it even as it grew.</p>
<p>Her jump took her into the Badger’s reaching backhand.</p>
<p>Her world turned 90 degrees. A clawtip shattered her shield-wing and scraped her tail as Prominence thermite rained not on Decim but the ride armor’s hull, opening the door for her Zanbato’s cryomer-sheath phase. Freezing liquid chemistry followed burning molten metal.</p>
<p>She landed off-balance. The shrieking steaming surface started to slow-blink. Decim rose, but Meteor was quick enough on the draw to pelt him with another seed.</p>
<p>“What—?!”</p>
<p>The roots erupted and trapped him in the self-destructing Badger.</p>
<p>Citrine alerted in her ear: “Showa, pick it up, we’re losing Adions!”</p>
<p>“Murphy, pick it up, I need that Cheval,” she relayed, watching the explosions die out.</p>
<p>“Doing it!”</p>
<p>The smoke cleared. Root bits fell off Captain Decim. His posture was out for blood.</p>
<p>“Trick after trick,” he snarled. “Do you even sleep?”</p>
<p>“My doctor says I don’t get enough.”</p>
<p>Decim snapped his shoulder cannons forward and opened fire, reaching behind his back with the same motion. She returned fire and moved, coincidentally the same direction he was going: right to Bakker and Shock. They shadowed each other like cartoon ninjas for all of a second before the thin wall between the loading doors passed between them. They each turned 90 degrees and dashed on a collision course.</p>
<p>Decim whipped two high-phase beam cutlasses out from his back. He was inviting a clash, a melee duel.</p>
<p>Meteor broke a hard left turn, splatting a Lockdown in his path. She pivoted as her dash quit and watched him slide with enviable grace to a pivot mirroring hers.</p>
<p>“Orders?!” Shock shouted.</p>
<p>Meteor didn’t even glance aside as her Hand-Drill came out. “Protect Bakker!”</p>
<p>The grinder whirred as she braced her back leg in the face of Decim’s oncoming dash. She was pressed for time and feeling more vulnerable by the second, out there within sight of the race track. She was in a mood to fight dirty.</p>
<p>All her sparring with Volt let her telegraph an uppercut legibly enough to fool an expert. It was as much in the hip and leg positioning as the shoulders.</p>
<p>Decim took the bait and leapt like a deer over her swing-and-miss punch.</p>
<p>The drillpunch followed him, shocking in triplicate.</p>
<p>His momentum took him where physics demanded as she switched back to Lockdown and fired a stream, taking it to half energy. It splatted the pavement, sending him skidding further than he might have liked, but he adapted quickly, dashing back doubletime on the icy stream.</p>
<p>Right into the Arbor Wall.</p>
<p>He was quicker on the uptake than Meteor gave him credit for. His sabers carved it off at the ground and the wall fell before him – clearing the way for the thermite glob. Despite his shield strobe he came at Meteor with a triple combo: cannon, cannon, double overhead swing.</p>
<p>Meteor’s body moved as fast as thought.<em> Jerk left, Remote Koi, juke right, Remote Koi</em>—</p>
<p>Only then did Meteor provide an epic clash as his naval sabers met his Gaia Sword and Zanbato. She didn’t give him any further satisfaction, instead crashing her fish into his back and spitting more Meteor Melter globs the instant they cycled back into use.</p>
<p>He roared a defiant war face and fired his cannons point-blank, but in terms of raw strength Meteor had him outmatched. She swung her blades to push his away as she dashed bodily into him. He tried to stomp for purchase, but his heels landed on the zero-friction cryomer.</p>
<p>With her arms occupied in grapple-parry and her Melter sill cycling up, microsecond by microsecond, she took another page from the Batteram playbook and hammered her forehead into Captain Decim’s nose.</p>
<p>He skidded back to normal friction with his balance shot to heck. She scissored him across the chest, high-phase plasma left and right, a devastating thermal shock as he came to a stop.</p>
<p>His shield blinked. And blinked.</p>
<p>He looked up at her, raised his shaky fist, and smashed it on his left shoulder.</p>
<p>There was no explosion – at least not of flame and smoke.</p>
<p>Decim disappeared into a constellation of escaping energy orbs. An emergency beamout.</p>
<p>She slammed her hand to her ear.</p>
<p>“<em>Atajo! Track that beamout!</em>”</p>
<p>“Trying!”</p>
<p>She looked over at her two-man squad. Shock was gripping Bakker’s hand and pressing it to his cheek.</p>
<p>“Shock,” she said, mixing gentleness with urgency. “Move him to the track, it’s safer there.”</p>
<p>“Yes ma’am.”</p>
<p>Meteor started moving, reasoning that Murphy would catch up anyway.</p>
<p>“Sinewave,” Meteor ordered, “Bakker’s hurt bad but the area’s still hostile. Send that Crusher to break the track once the squad’s on it, and also get an evac for them!”</p>
<p>“Copy. Prioritizing.”</p>
<p>Meteor deftly switched comm channels. “Murphy, get here pronto!”</p>
<p>“Coming,” Murphy shot back, “got shot a few times!”</p>
<p>“It happens!” She switched again. “Citrine, we’re through, status?!”</p>
<p>“He’s playing with us!” Citrine yelled. “Get moving!”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>The garage-slash-plant wasn’t too far from the track; closest to Meteor was a sort of victory loop surrounded by empty stadium seating. She didn’t know a lot about the sport, but she knew the shape of modern Battle &amp; Chase tracks was a single wide lane with a loop at either end. Groups of competitors started at <em>both</em> ends of the track, and one lap was a full back-and-forth circuit; the inevitable point at which oncoming groups collided supposedly made for great drama.</p>
<p>“Lieutenant!” Murphy commed. “Me on your six!”</p>
<p>“Beautiful!”</p>
<p>She spoke too soon. Murphy was scored and perforated by small arms fire. The Cheval, however, is looking good.</p>
<p>He hopped off. “Left quite a path.”</p>
<p>She hopped on. “Help Bakker onto the road.”</p>
<p>Murphy saluted, ribboning a little smoke from a blast mark on his forearm. “Good hunting.”</p>
<p>Meteor engaged the motor and was off to the races. She entered the track to silent applause from the empty stands.</p>
<p>“Citrine, I’m in transit! Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em!”</p>
<p>“<em>Choke on THIS you eight-legged motherf</em>—”</p>
<p>The blast through the comms cut Citrine off. Meteor heard the boom through plain air.</p>
<p>Her ride chaser crossed the starting line. Warning lights flared: “FALSE START.”</p>
<p>For once in her life, she couldn’t bother with the rules.</p>
<p>“Bakker, Shock, Murphy, I’m on my way. Thank you. Now get to the road and the rest of my deployment will keep you… well, safer than you are now.”</p>
<p>“Thank <em>you</em>, ma’am,” Shock commed back. “Been a pleasure.”</p>
<p>Meteor revved the engines and took off past the stands. The speedway left the ground almost immediately and started crossing the water. Already she could see part of the road had collapsed thanks to the post-Orangutank quake, but luckily there was more than one road. Paths branched and overlap, and weren’t broken equally.</p>
<p>“HAZARDS ACTIVE,” read a warning sign. “COME GET SOME, HUNTER.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Wonderful.</em>
</p>
<p>Her first hazard unscrewed itself from recesses in the track: old-fashioned Bar Wayings at random intervals. She twitched left, twitched right, and leaned too far on the third evasion, but high-speed glancing impact with a screwshaft merely scuffed her paint. She burned the turbo dash every time the Cheval’s system allowed it and flew over a ramp. Her ride sailed a ways and landed heavily. Whirring noises closed in behind her. Crash Roaders. The back of the ramp was a hatch into the track itself. She was well past it already, and even a Cheval’s turbo could outpace the boar-like racers, but they were persistent.</p>
<p>Part of the road was broken off at an upper/lower fork. She weaved to a stable bridge of remaining surface on the high road and turboed across – only to face two more ramp-back hatches opening up. Hamma Hammas, big and durable morningstar-throwers, peeked out.</p>
<p><em>Nope</em>.</p>
<p>Meteor sped off the side.</p>
<p>She dropped for a full second.</p>
<p>The Cheval kicked up sparks on impact with the lower track. She wobbled, but her reflexes kept her from spinning out. The wobble still cost her; she noticed the emerging Gabyoall spinnerbots too late. They slid right out of recessed slots in the track and scraped more than just paint from her ride. The dashboard flares a “HULL INTEGRITY” alert as she weaved and accelerated.</p>
<p>“C’mon, hold together…”</p>
<p>Up ahead, three more Gabyoalls bounced between the edges of the track like hockey pucks.</p>
<p>She clamped her lips, gunned the motor, tried to time it right—</p>
<p>And managed to hit two of them with a single Melter grenade as they passed each other. The third was easy to jump.</p>
<p>“Lieutenant!” Shock commed her in a panic. “Drivebys! The gap wasn’t done, they shot us and got on the road!”</p>
<p><em>Crap</em>. “Damage?”</p>
<p>“I took some hits for Bakker but I’ll live! But they’re on Hornets, they’ll catch up!”</p>
<p>“Copy.”</p>
<p>The track started to converge, but the earthquake damage was severe: there was nothing but air between a hazard-hatch ramp and the lip of the upper track.</p>
<p>She didn’t like her odds of making it on a Cheval. She needed more speed.</p>
<p>
  <em>Lockdown slide?</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>But ride chasers don’t skid, they hover!</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Unless—</em>
</p>
<p>Her timing was perfect. With one hand on the controls, she stood on the seat, aimed ahead and coated the road with pressurized zero-friction ice chemistry. She slammed her big fat chassis back down, sinking the ride chaser to the ground such that its turbo boost met no friction and sped all the faster.</p>
<p>She and her bike cleared the gap, but it was a near thing.</p>
<p>“<em>Woo!</em>”</p>
<p>Girtabomb was still first on her mind, but she started to get into the ride for its own sake. A grove of Bar Wayings screwed back up in her way, but she bobbed through them without a hitch.</p>
<p>Rival engines revved behind her. She laid on the turbo.</p>
<p>“Atajo, what’s coming for me?”</p>
<p>“Jus’sec. Okay, Hornets on Hornets, three of ‘em. Damn but those things are souped-up.”</p>
<p>“Vee formation?”</p>
<p>“Tailswipe.” Meaning a mobile line, swinging back and forth as needed… “And Bomb Beens ahead.”</p>
<p>Meteor was very glad for her sensitive hearing. Ahead, slow orange flies dropped miniature bombs. Behind her, left right and center, ride chasers opened fire.</p>
<p>She was down to five Arbor Walls. She spent one behind her and pulled a dangerous turn close to the edge of the road. The noises told the story: increasingly rapid fire, a <em>vrrum</em> of a turn, a crash, an explosion. Adion-type mounted cannonfire shot past her.</p>
<p>“Jump, jump!” Atajo warned.</p>
<p>She turned her buster forward, switched back to default and popped a Been mine in her way as she took a hatch ramp at full speed.</p>
<p>A crack in the road would’ve made for a nasty accident if she hadn’t.</p>
<p>She arched high enough to, <em>why not</em>, open fire with the Cheval’s gun and spray-and-pray the next wave of bombdroppers on her way down. They were comically fragile and about as evasive as clouds.</p>
<p>Both trailing Hornet bikes fired on her as another patch of Bar Wayings rose out of the tiny fresh minefield. There was no evading that time. She gave them a swerve, but the Cheval took two hits. She hammered the fire button and spat a Melter rocket at the bars right in her way, carving a path at the cost of more vehicle damage. It paid off, however: hers was the only clear path through. The Hornets followed single-file.</p>
<p>The Cheval jumped over a mine as she swung her arm back. The pursuers barreled into her flying Spark Hand-Drill with a lot of vowels and volume. Drills sheared metal and electricity crackled into a double crash.</p>
<p>She took one more turbo jump over a ramp and a wide gap in the road. Her ride began smoking as it landed.</p>
<p>“Meteor,” Atajo commed, “the road’s broken clean off at the edge of Isla de Providencia. He’s waiting.”</p>
<p>“Any damage to him?”</p>
<p>“Minor if anything.”</p>
<p>“How soon?”</p>
<p>“At your speed? Twenty seconds. Mind the road cracks and good hunting.”</p>
<p>“Right…” she focused. “Citrine, I’m nearly on him, your team alive?”</p>
<p>“Within degrees,” she grunted, oddly rhythmic. “I broke the road for you. Frag ‘im up, Lieutenant.”</p>
<p>Meteor crested a slight hill. The hazards had stopped hazarding.</p>
<p>She saw her mark, silver and purple glinting in the sun like a trophy. He raised a long arm – his tail – his tail <em>gun</em>—</p>
<p>A vulcan-like spray of plasma rained on the downhill curve. Meteor took a scuffing plasma round to the cheek; the Cheval took worse.</p>
<p>She jumped off and let her faithful steed fly at him, smoking and rupturing all the way.</p>
<p>Chaser Girtabomb braced his eight legs, pivoted in place and hammered the poor vehicle with the length of his spike-lined tail. The ride chaser burst into pieces as it tumbled off the edge of the road’s terminus. Thirty meters of race track were simply gone.</p>
<p>The Maverick crossed his arms – both sets of them, human arms above and scorpion claws below.</p>
<p>“I broke your stupid crap, moron.”</p>
<p>Meteor was expecting a professional. He sounded like a street tough.</p>
<p>“End of the road, Girtabomb. Literally. You had to know it would end like this.”</p>
<p>He cocked his head and curled his lip, half petulant and half defiant. “Uhh, no. I shot them chuckleheads down on <em>my</em> turf. Now it’s jus’ you. And, uh, huh-huh,” he chuckled, “y’know somethin’? I ain’t gettin’ paid to stick around for no Hunter.”</p>
<p>He jumped in place, his legs folded under him and he hovered like a ride chaser from engines in his underbelly.</p>
<p>“Have fun walkin’ back, dumbass.” He grinned, tossing her a mocking salute. “Toodles.”</p>
<p>“Um—?!”</p>
<p>He didn’t simply dash but <em>launched</em> straight for the sizeable gap between Meteor and the edge of the road.</p>
<p>Her agile frame parts were useless. She couldn’t catch him. It was all she could do to ding him with buster fire before he was over the top of the hill.</p>
<p>She gave chase. He blazed out of range. She fired over and over, but he was too fast, too fast. He neared the final crack, the opposite end of the island of race track.</p>
<p>Citrine emerged from the chasm in front of him, throwing herself up onto the road like an escapee from Hell.</p>
<p>Girtabomb faltered. “Yo what the—?!”</p>
<p>Citrine threw out her arms, thrust out her chest—</p>
<p>“<em>Claymore BREAKER!</em>”</p>
<p>Thirty more meters of road disappeared.</p>
<p>Meteor caught a glimpse of Girtabomb’s thrusters turning back into legs before he was enveloped in light and smoke.</p>
<p>She shielded her eyes. The wind and blastwave buffeted her with grit.</p>
<p>Citrine broke into comms. “<em>I said frag ‘im up!</em>” She splashed into the sea.</p>
<p>“Atajo, status?!”</p>
<p>“He’s trapped with you. Get ready.”</p>
<p>Meteor was glad to have had such clearance from Citrine’s special attack. The Battle &amp; Chase Speedway was cut off from both sides, shortened into a slightly curved battlefield standing high above Lake Maracaibo.</p>
<p>Chaser Girtabomb stepped out of the smoke. His silver was tarnished, but every body part was still attached – even his scorpion-half claws, which looked to have taken the worst of the damage. They clacked angrily. His human-half fists shook.</p>
<p>“Frickin’. Unbelievable. <em>You!</em>” He pointed Meteor’s way, hopped in place and shifted his lower half back into vehicular homicide mode. “I’m gonna fly through your <em>windshield</em> you piece’a crap!”</p>
<p>He launched without another word; his tail vulcan did the talking. Meteor dashed downhill in the leeward side before he could tag her, buying a second to think.</p>
<p>The revving blast of his chaser mode telegraphed his approach on the left side. Meteor shot her buster charge left; he crested the top at the right, moving fast enough to launch overhead. His arm cannons rained trios of spheres with each shot. She dashed out, got a hand on her Zanbato, turned to see the balls pop into hemispheres of fire – as Girtabomb skirted them to rush her, claws open and all guns forward.</p>
<p>
  <em>He wants a drive-by, does he?</em>
</p>
<p>She took her big saber two-handed, ignited the icy blade at her left and committed to a jumping slash. He veered to her right, claws clamping on nothing, his own right arm spraying a triple-bomb and his tail swinging in spikes-first.</p>
<p>She twisted to her left – two red-tinted stickies missed, one tagged her chest – and slashed not with both hands but only her left, freeing her buster for an Arbor seed level with her center of gravity. The tail swung exactly there, spearing the seed with a spike. In the passing exchange of blows, his torso took the cryomer splash too fast for the hibeam to follow and Meteor was bludgeoned by her own wood. It hurt far less than the spike would have.</p>
<p>The clash broke, him speeding on, her flipping head-over-tail from the impact, shields flashing in time with each other. A fireball erupted from the one stickybomb that tagged Meteor, but she took it like a spring breeze.</p>
<p>She landed. He turned, drifting. His tail was rooted in place, immobile; he curved his drift to fire his vulcan as he fired six more bombs, tinted green. Meteor took a handful of plinking shots, but thanks to the Zanbato already being alight and in plasma mode, she swatted down two of the stickies as she pressed closer, following his drift arc.</p>
<p>He broke the arc and rocketed straight at her. She brought up her buster, and true to form he was already dodging.</p>
<p>The width of the spreading trio of Spark Hand-Drill bits didn’t care. One drill clipped him. Electricity snapped, crackled, and popped over his flaring shields. He shot straight by without even attempting a jousting strike; in a flash of slow-time perception Meteor saw his whole human half was seized up and arced back.</p>
<p>“<em>D’YA-A-A-A-AH</em>,” he dopplered past.</p>
<p>She turned to fire again, but the stickies finally popped, not into flame but hedgehog hemispheres of shrapnel. There was no dodging them. Her shields blinked under the barrage of needles as he disappeared over the hill and out of her line of sight.</p>
<p>Meteor earned a second to breathe. She stowed the Zanbato for recharging and plucked one of the spikes stuck in her armor. It was cyberwood.</p>
<p>Distant rumbles of exploding flame sounded out from behind the hill.</p>
<p><em>Burning. Burning off the wood constriction</em>…</p>
<p>She produced two Remote Koi and climbed the slope. Girtabomb came back into sight just as he repeatedly fired some sort of canisters at a high angle. The projectiles burst and rained clusters of smaller explosives over the slope. Saturation. Meteor dashed closer and he adjusted the angle, firing another barrage of stickies before charging, claws wide, tail moving freely.</p>
<p>The koi drones caught two of the bombs in their mouths and veered to collide with the Maverick.</p>
<p>They froze solid and clonked harmlessly to the ground like, well, frozen fish.</p>
<p>Meteor switched and fired what she knew worked.</p>
<p>Girtabomb jumped over the Sparkdrill’s spread. His front two scorpion legs ignited saber skates like a better class of ride chaser.</p>
<p>Meteor took her only option. She dashed under him.</p>
<p>His middle four legs blasted a directed dash that flipped him in the air and drove his rapid-firing stinger under her neck.</p>
<p>The impact flared her shields and the instant plasma-vulcan injection only added insult. The collision threw her aside – as patches of cryomer pop-splatted into place around her.</p>
<p>“Ha-<em>hah!</em> You got <em>owned!</em>” Girtabomb slid down the slick, ice-blue slope.</p>
<p>
  <em>Fire, wood, ice… it’s a scan-and-spoof system! That jerk!</em>
</p>
<p>The ice patch had turned the slope one-way for anyone not half-vehicle. Girtabomb retreated to the broken edge and fired more overhead cluster bombs.</p>
<p>Meteor snap-fired one of her last three Arbor Walls at the top of the slope and started charging her buster. More minibombs rained blindly; they fell close and whirred into the road like dentist’s drills before exploding shaped charges that cracked the surface of the roadbed.</p>
<p><em>Drills now. But no lightning</em>…</p>
<p>With the Wall up she couldn’t see him. She visualized the timing, waited until she heard his dash—</p>
<p>
  <em>There!</em>
</p>
<p>In a flurry of movement she fired to the left, rolled her back to the wall, spat a Melter glob to the right close enough to ignite the wood, switched to her Hand-Drill, Gaia-Sword-slashed the Wall at the base and shoulder-tackled it downhill.</p>
<p>The buster shot flew wide and expired. The thermite burned the road. The ludicrous sliding velocity of the flaming plank slammed into a lower claw as Meteor crashed into Girtabomb, electrodrill-first. The grinding cones ate through his other claw’s exoskeleton and high voltage danced over his body, making him spin out despite hovering over his own ice hazard.</p>
<p>Meteor dug her heels down and skidded. Girtabomb righted himself at the far wall that marked the side of the road. An ad banner painted there advised him to buy life insurance.</p>
<p>Why wasn’t a professional high-speed combatant more comfortable with up-front confrontation? Why was he favoring distance and drive-bys and area denial? The answer hit Meteor like vehicular homicide: he was specced for performance. Literally performative. Knock-down drag-out fights weren’t in his playbook.</p>
<p>Meteor launched more Remote Kois on homing arcs as she took the initiative and dashed at <em>him</em> for a change.</p>
<p>He launched back up the slippery slope and drifted a sideways arc, eyes locked on her. Her drones occupied his vulcan as his arm cannons littered green bomb-groups of three. He shot down her koi, so she produced two more and spat with a flick of her head to melt down the nearest two bombs in her way. The rest of them went off and lightly needled her as she dashed through and brought out her big sword.</p>
<p>He banked off the road-edge barrier and spewed more wood-shrapnel bombs. She had him on the run, but she could play attrition too; one sacrificial koi was shot down but the other smacked his side and popped like a firework.</p>
<p>She switched to her Walls, seeded the ground, swapped back to Hand-Drills, and fired what she hoped was the last hit—</p>
<p>But Chaser Girtabomb pulled an unbelievable hard turn and turbo-dashed <em>through</em> the spread of the electric triangle.</p>
<p>Meteor ducked behind her wall. Girtabomb approached from the left. Milliseconds ticked down.</p>
<p>She ignited her Zanbato.</p>
<p>She tossed it, still lit, to the left side of the wall.</p>
<p>She jumped to the right, VWES assembling iron and motors as fast as the WEAPON system could fabricate molecules and stick them together.</p>
<p>The moment was a picture. Girtabomb’s pride melted to shock.</p>
<p>The first electrons met and shook hands across her weapon as she rammed her drilling arm up to the elbow into his lower torso. And through. Electricity danced through the colossal rend and paralyzed him even as his momentum kept him going.</p>
<p>“Sssuu<em>uucks—!</em>”</p>
<p>Girtabomb crashed into the guarding wall and touched off the rolling blast of his finale. Maybe because of his onboard ordinance, his core failure went on a long time with a lot of smaller intermittent accompanying bursts. The last applause he’d ever receive.</p>
<p>Meteor rolled her neck.</p>
<p>“Mmkhhhsh,” she tried to speak. She blinked. She touched her neck. The direct blow from the vulcan stinger had blown out her voicebox.</p>
<p><em>That punk</em>.</p>
<p>She let her arm flop down and simply pinged a Mission Complete signal, followed quickly by a standard evac request. Not emergency, just standard. She doubted anybody else would be visiting her tall island of pavement.</p>
<p>“Gotcha on sat-cam, Meteor,” said Atajo. “Just relayed a get-me-outtie to the forward station. Repliforce is in heavy evac. Sinewave’s sending some guys to pick up your guys. I don’t think you lost a one! Not from First, not from your bring-alongs! That’s really something, y’know? Can’t remember the last time that happened.” He finally paused. “What, cat got your tongue? Gimme a word, huh?”</p>
<p>Meteor looked up to the sky, pointed to her throat.</p>
<p>“Oh.”</p>
<p>She kissed her fist and flashed a V sign.</p>
<p>She kind of wished she had a checkered flag.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:<br/>“The United Mexican States”</p>
<p>The United Mexican States – colloquially “Mexico” – is a federal republic of 29 states and Mexico City. With over 180,000,000 citizens, it is the eighth most populous country in the world, and its crown jewel Mexico City has the fourth-largest greater metropolitan population in the world. Its current President is Brayan Asturias-Lawson, Mexico City’s former mayor.</p>
<p>Mexico was already enjoying a world-class economy when Doctors Light and Wily arrived on history’s page. The people and government of Mexico embraced androids, and their advances in the field were on par with the world’s finest. Such was their love for their robotic children that they held out longer than any other country when the World Robotics Alliance laid down its ban on androids. In the end, America and Brazil teamed up with the WRA to levy crippling economic sanctions on Mexico until it finally retired the world’s last remaining Robot Master – one Medevac Man, still on display at the Guadalajara Robot Museum.</p>
<p>Mexico blamed its sanctioners for its “Lost Years” and carried that bad blood through the 22nd Century, when they would blame Brazil for everything from supporting a successful secessionist movement to sabotaging their Mining World robots. With the advent of reploids, Mexico was the first country to request a CainLabs franchise, but when Brazil went to the U.N. to attempt to block the deal, the two countries nearly began a shooting war. In time, however, their relations came to a détente; Mexican reploids, for instance, generously contributed labor to Sao Paulo’s much-needed recovery efforts after the Maverick War.</p>
<p>Mexico remains a world leader in high technology. The Callisto Resource Authority is based in Mexico City and Maverick Hunter Headquarters Central America is based in Veracruz.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Meteor's Future?! The Heart-Pounding Museum Date!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Iron Monitor takes Meteor on a date to a gala opening for a museum. Their deep conversation is interrupted by Repliforce.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Meteor was terribly distracted.</p>
<p>Over her post-mission stay in the increasingly-familiar medbay, she had little to do but think about her upcoming date.</p>
<p>In about an hour she was due to meet up with Iron Monitor to visit… somewhere or other he picked.</p>
<p>
  <em>Oh no I should’ve expressed a preference, oh man what was I thinking, oh heck I should probably ask for an armor buff too, oh flip oh dang oh gosh—</em>
</p>
<p>“I’m reading some delayed stress reactions,” Vitamin noted with concern, wrists-deep in her throat. Her neck paneling and whole jaw were removed, leaving sensitive parts naked.</p>
<p>Meteor’s thoughts ran across a monitor in text form.</p>
<p>{Oh, um, don’t mind that, that’s just me worrying about… well, you know, everybody knows at this point.}</p>
<p>“Ah,” he nodded. “Unfortunately, Lieutenant, relationship advice is outside my purview. Relationships too, for that matter.”</p>
<p>{Are Lifesavers even allowed to fraternize?}</p>
<p>“Only off-duty.” Vitamin picked up a part and delicately wired it into place. “It isn’t for me. I’m married to my work, and I’m in good company. Isaac Newton himself focused on his labor to the exception of women, you know.”</p>
<p>{You a weird alchemist too?} She teased.</p>
<p>“Only off-duty,” he smiled.</p>
<p>A monitor pinged an incoming transmission. Vitamin swiped it in. It was Atajo, squared blue shoulders and mustache-plate and all.</p>
<p>“Hey you,” he greeted. “Oof, voicebox still messed up? I can call back later.”</p>
<p>Meteor gave him a thumbs-down and a beckon.</p>
<p>“It’s about Decim’s beamout,” he rested his cheek on his fist. “It had a Cyberspace component, so for now I can only narrow it down to the hemisphere. Sixteenth says it smells like Spectrod’s tech.” He brightened up, “Oh, and Deco and her people ripped some sweet intel from Girtabomb. Apparently he had a DNA scanner with rare enough traits that it could only have come from a few places. They’ve got me running the beamout data with an eyebrow comb to see where coordinates might line up. If I find something, I’ll get it to Sixteenth – between them and me, pretty soon we’ll pinpoint where Spectrod was based. They’ve even got some big-name specialist working on it.”</p>
<p>Meteor thought R&amp;D handled everything in their tower on the base, but she supposed that even they had outposts.</p>
<p>“Re-establishing vocal connection,” said Vitamin.</p>
<p>Meteor felt an electric tickle by her throat-mounted Meteor Melter projector. She coughed, jawless and bare-necked. Her upper lip moved with her words as though her lower lip were still attached. “Testing, testing, do re mi…”</p>
<p>“Sounds like you,” said Atajo.</p>
<p>“I should hope so. Thanks for keeping me informed, Atajo. And for your help. There’s just one more mission on my roster, and she’s a big one, so I hope you’re ready.”</p>
<p>Atajo tapped his chin. “That’s weeeeird, I thought you had a late addition to tackle, top priority.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Crap, another Maverick?</em>
</p>
<p>“News to me. Who is it?”</p>
<p>Her favorite navigator grinned like a teenager. “Somebody tall, thick, green, spiky… careful you don’t snog him too hard, you might end up back with Vite before morning.”</p>
<p>“Oh shut <em>up</em>,” she laughed, “I’m breaking contact.”</p>
<p>“Adios, have fun,” he playfully waved. “Don’t spend your payday all in one place.”</p>
<p>She closed him out.</p>
<p>
  <em>Oh right, payday.</em>
</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>MISSION</p>
<p>C O M P L E T E</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- A-Rank Mission Parameters Complete: 35,000z</p>
<p>- Disruption of Enemy Manufacturing: 10,000z</p>
<p>- Repliforce Cell Neutralization: 5,000z</p>
<p>- Zero Allied Units Lost: 10,000z</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TOTAL: 60,000z</p>
<p>ACCOUNT: 80,000z</p>
<p>#</p>
<p><em>… I can’t believe I actually forgot. I’m </em>really<em> too stressed over this date.</em></p>
<p>Meteor stewed in her anxiety, trying and failing to center herself as Vitamin put her neck back together. At last he fitted the final plate. “I’m done here, Lieutenant.”</p>
<p>She hopped off the slab. “Much appreciated as always.”</p>
<p>Vitamin glanced away and tilts his head a little, clearly reading something internal. “Incidentally, your injured Chrysoprase is doing quite well in surgery.”</p>
<p>Her jaw nearly fell back off. “Bakker is? Really? But he got mauled by a ride armor! His arm and leg were almost off!”</p>
<p>“We’re exceptionally well-equipped to repair the Cabochon series here,” Vitamin replied with a touch of pride. “Mass-produced units such as them – or, come to that, we Lifesavers – are much easier to fix than specialized models such as yourself. Please bear that in mind.”</p>
<p>Meteor took the chastisement as due cost.</p>
<p>“I will. I promise.”</p>
<p>“Incidentally, good luck on your date. I believe Lieutenant Monitor is waiting in the Courtyard.”</p>
<p>Meteor set her mouth into a line so straight it could calibrate a laser.</p>
<p>“Thanks,” she lied.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor had faced monsters. She’d been torn apart. She’d lost family and seen horrors that only a historian could appreciate.</p>
<p>And there she was, dithering behind a door, undone by romantic anxiety.</p>
<p>At length, Meteor wake-up slapped her cheeks and marched straight out.</p>
<p>She arrived in the Courtyard and fell in love.</p>
<p>Being ex-Decommissions, she was intimately familiar with equipment and vehicle specs. When it came to ride chasers, Chevals were the workhorses and Adions were the warhorses. The Hunters didn’t have a role exclusively for <em>show</em> horses, but if they did, the long-bodied mine-sweeping bird-beaked Condor would have fit the bill. Awaiting Meteor’s arrival were two of the most beautiful Condors she’d ever seen: sleek curves of glossy black and gold, either fresh from the showroom or polished like they were. The engines were pristine, the seat brand new, the windshield glass positively lustrous.</p>
<p>Iron Monitor waited to the side, hands behind his back, evidently pleased with himself. His armor was as polished as the Condors. The wing-like crests on his back and the downward-pointing shield-projector crystals on his chest were tinted a formal black instead of their usual red.</p>
<p>Meteor spared him only a glance of astonished thanks, reminding herself that he existed, and approached the magnificent chasers with reverent awe.</p>
<p>“Surplus from Darwin,” Monitor had to smile audibly, for his helmet was on. “Hardly anybody needs to sweep mines in a huge hurry anymore. I had ‘em shined up a bit.”</p>
<p>Meteor barely heard him. She hovered her hands over the Condor’s hood. She felt like a Dickensian orphan invited to a state dinner. She wasn’t sure if she should even touch it.</p>
<p>She touched it.</p>
<p>“She’s beautiful,” Meteor whispered.</p>
<p>“I know.”</p>
<p><em>Wow gosh okay um yeah oh wow</em>.</p>
<p>“Where are we taking them?” Meteor successfully said without stammering.</p>
<p>“Just into town, catch some pretty intense entertainment. Really crack some brains,” Monitor punched his palm.</p>
<p>Meteor give the Condor one more loving stroke. “I’m gonna level with you, Monitor, when I’m off work the most intensity I ever like is with karaoke. I mean I get enough danger in the field, y’know? I mean if I’m not out with friends I’m sitting somewhere reading books.” She fidgeted her hands. “I mean I know that’s boring I mean I’m not saying we ride out to a poetry slam or anything but I mean that gives you an idea of what—”</p>
<p>Monitor took her by her hands, stilling them. “Meteor.”</p>
<p>She radiated flustered heat. <em>He’s using my first name does he know the connotation wait no that’s different Japanese form stupid English maybe it’s an Australian dialect thing no stop thinking about linguistics stupid he’s just using familiar terms like a friend but this is a date and holding hands and using first names on a first date and and and—</em></p>
<p>“Um?” She managed.</p>
<p>“I was joking.”</p>
<p>“But you said…”</p>
<p>“Figurative.”</p>
<p>Her cheeks burned and thermite had nothing to do with it. “Oh. Heh. Um. Sorry. Ha-ha. Yeah. Where, um, where to?”</p>
<p>“Been to the Library of the Americas lately?”</p>
<p>She hadn’t. Nobody had. The educational jewel of Veracruz’s civic pride, the place she’d want to live in if she had a choice, has been closed for months. They had been renovating top-to-bottom while integrating a Cyberspace node, and to honor completion there was supposed to be some sort of—</p>
<p>“You <em>didn’t!</em>” She excitedly clenched his hands.</p>
<p>“I did.” He let go to bring out a datapad sized to his big hands. “The charity gala opening. Minimum ticket price was ten grand each, but I doubled it for both of us. Sri Lanka won’t get rebuilt on the cheap, after all.”</p>
<p>Meteor’s systems alerted her to a tiny data package delivery. The gravity of her situation hit her all at once.</p>
<p>She was actually seriously for-real going to one of the three greatest libraries on the hemisphere, on a <em>date</em>, in <em>public</em>, riding a freaking <em>Condor</em>.</p>
<p>A well-built restraint holding back her nerdy enthusiasm snapped like a twig.</p>
<p>Meteor collided with Monitor’s big frame and latched her arms around him with an excited wiggle, putting all of Deco’s hugs to shame.</p>
<p>“<em>AaaaAAAH</em> this is so nice! Thank you <em>thank you</em>, I didn’t expect any of this!”</p>
<p>She let him go before he could hug back. He looked a little stunned. He coughed into his fist, just for the body language.</p>
<p>“Well. I try. It’s on the other side of town, but you probably knew that. I plotted out a route, so…” He gestured to her ride.</p>
<p>“After you,” she bowed her head.</p>
<p>He took the lead, guiding her out of the headquarters campus and into modern Veracruz as the sun began to set.</p>
<p>As little as a hundred years prior, the city wasn’t even half as large. A popular Mexican president born in the area and obsessed with civic infrastructure gave it – with no small amount of controversy – preferential treatment over other coastal cites when the tides began to rise. Other cities were inundated by climate change and a parade of hurricanes, but Veracruz survived.</p>
<p>Monitor led Meteor down the recently-renamed Avenida de Línea Verde, “Green Line Avenue,” an artery formerly bisecting the urban center that lay within view of the coast. Park after park drew her eye, but none so much as the Reserva Natural Estatal Arroyo Moreno – a nature reserve significantly expanded to cover and keep safe for history the sunken portion of the city. The shapes of past-era houses and buildings were just barely discernable in the water. Wading birds settled in for the night. The road level climbed specifically to offer that view.</p>
<p>“Wow…”</p>
<p>“I thought you’d like it,” said Monitor.</p>
<p>“I’ve been to a few ruins before, not counting the ones I worked around with my birth-job. Swam down old streets, took pictures for that show I was on.”</p>
<p>“<em>Where the Calendar Ends</em>, right?”</p>
<p>“You looked it up?”</p>
<p>“Of course I looked it up. I didn’t see all your segments, but I got the idea. Think you’ll ever go back to television?”</p>
<p>“Nah. I got tired of just <em>reacting</em> to history. I wanted to influence it to do the most good, but I didn’t want to go into politics. The Hunters solved problems a lot faster. Sure beats writing for a show.”</p>
<p>They rode for a moment, enjoying the sight of natural dark greens and blues.</p>
<p>“How about you, Monitor? What’s your career been like?”</p>
<p>“Busy,” he evaded. “I’m a high-energy experiment built on commission for the Darwin HQ. Did the usual Hunter things. Not so much interested in where I’ve been than where I’m going. You know?”</p>
<p>“Not really. History’s important,” Meteor insisted. “Time is the biggest non-physical resource we have. Where you’ve been informs where you’re going, y’know?”</p>
<p>“If you say so.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Oh no.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Quick, quick, salvage!</em>
</p>
<p>“So, uh,” Meteor panic-chuckled, “it’s a real nice night… for an evening…”</p>
<p>“It’d have to be,” he chuckled more genuinely.</p>
<p>Meteor wanted to die.</p>
<p>Just not right then. The scenery was too pretty.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>The Library of the Americas stood in a wealthy district of white stone. It was one of Veracruz’s major tourist destinations, the largest storehouse-slash-museum of physical media south of the United States Library of Congress. The renovations were functionally complete that night, and the regional rich were present to be seen and to say they were there.</p>
<p>Meteor felt a little out of place as she and Monitor pulled up. Their Condors certainly weren’t; she noticed a valet taking a black one away just ahead of her. Men and women in fancy formals climbed the steps like Cinderellas. She parked and dismounted, and a smartly-polished black-armored Steel Beret – whether a former Hunter regular or not, she couldn’t tell – approached with a datapad.</p>
<p>“Hello, honored guests,” he greeted. He, like the rest of his model line, had an athletic silhouette. “Checking your ticket data… aha, looks well in order. A valet will be out shortly to handle your vehicles.”</p>
<p>“Thanks,” Monitor produced his own pad and tapped something in. “Here, put them somewhere nice.”</p>
<p>An ancient cash-machine sound file ringed from the greeter’s pad. His eyes go big.</p>
<p>“Yes sir!” He vigorously nodded.</p>
<p>“Any big notables arrived yet?” Meteor asked.</p>
<p>The greeter checks his apparently tip-filled pad. “Why yes, the Mayor is here, the Governor, much of the Library’s executive committee… oh, and some of your fellow Maverick Hunters! A mister Laser Focalizar, a mister Nouveau…”</p>
<p>Meteor laughed. “Oh gosh we have to get in there.”</p>
<p>“Let’s,” Monitor held out his elbow.</p>
<p>She took his arm and ascended the stairs.</p>
<p>
  <em>Asagi’s going to flip when she hears about this.</em>
</p>
<p>The foyer – or was it a vestibule? – was lined with thousands of books behind glass. More than decoration, each one was available for on-site perusal and DRM-enforced temporary download at terminals set up on marble pedestals. The upper crust seemed to find it entertaining.</p>
<p>“Ooh,” a starlet cooed, “they’re so twentieth-century! Look, look,” she tugged at her date’s sleeve, “the data files are scans of each pages! What a quaint little font!”</p>
<p>A man with a nearly-empty wine glass tried to impress a fat man in a tuxedo. “This is how they accessed data in the twentieth century,” he lectured in lockjaw. “We’re lacking the little men on rolling ladders, but some things have to be translated to modern taste…”</p>
<p>“I say,” smiled a woman with a cybernetic eye ostentatiously decorated with metal filigree around her cheek and eyebrow, “are those more Hunters?”</p>
<p>Attention started to turn Meteor’s way.</p>
<p>“Well they look the part.”</p>
<p>“What a lovely color pair.”</p>
<p>“My word, that’s—er...”</p>
<p>“Meteor Showa,” she helped.</p>
<p>“And date,” Monitor added with a bragging air.</p>
<p>“Oh goodness,” the starlet gasped, “I heard all about you on social media!”</p>
<p>“Your star’s certainly rising, isn’t it?” The fat man led the rest into sensible social laughter.</p>
<p>Monitor patted Meteor’s hand hooked around his elbow. “With an unlimited ceiling. It’s my honor to escort her tonight.”</p>
<p>Meteor felt the congratulatory envy from a few of the watching eyes, especially the cybernetic one.</p>
<p>“Eheh-heh, honor’s all mine, let’s, um, head in…”</p>
<p>
  <em>People. Lots of people.</em>
</p>
<p>She was sociable by nature with no phobia of crowds, but she had never experienced the context of walking into a charity ball with a big handsome reploid on her arm. It was a little daunting.</p>
<p>The showpiece hall of the Library was a temple to the <em>idea</em> of books. The walls were patterned with holographic shelves and book spines blending up to Alexandrian crosshatch scroll-cubbies supporting an overhead mural of 18<sup>th</sup>-century printers and ancient scribes and stone-chislers. Support columns twisted with holographic staircases to nowhere. Individual exhibits under glass anchored clusters of classy conversation between people who ignored the treasures inside.</p>
<p>Meteor needed a rock, an island, to avoid getting swept out.</p>
<p>She spotted Nouveau by a far wall and gently tugged Monitor along.</p>
<p>The 4<sup>th</sup>’s second-in-command lurked in place like Mister Darcy. “Lieutenant,” he accepted, tipping a tiny expensive glass down his throat. “Lieute<em>nants</em>. Attached at the hip already?”</p>
<p>She self-consciously let go of her date’s arm. “I didn’t know you’d be here, Nouveau.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t know <em>he</em> would be here,” Nouveau cast a catty glare out into the crowd. “Look at him, that usurper.”</p>
<p>Meteor and Monitor tried to see the focus of his ire. Meteor saw him right away: Laser Focalizar, second-in-command of the local 6<sup>th</sup> Unit, chatting up Governor Alvarez.</p>
<p>Nouveau tried to kill him with eyebrow-furrowing. “The Governor’s running on increased funding for the base, and Fourth is starting to strain in our little courtyard donut. Sixth needs no more, they’re already the damn prince of the campus, but I scarcely got two words in before that blasted seal poached him and launched into that never-ending charm offensive. Nuisance.”</p>
<p>“Well there’s his wife,” Meteor pointed, “the dark one in blue by the printing press. You could try talking to her…”</p>
<p>Monitor pointed in a different direction. “I think that man there’s from the BBC.”</p>
<p>“Hmph,” Nouveau considered. “Indirect attack. Not bad. Here, free refills,” he handed his glass to Monitor in passing.</p>
<p>“Should I get something?” He asked. “I see a refiller by the early E-books.”</p>
<p>“No, I don’t want to go swimming in that crowd just yet.”</p>
<p>“Fair enough.”</p>
<p>Meteor hung out under patterned books and watched the high society physics in action. None of them seemed to appreciate the exhibits except as places to rest their eyes between sentences. Octavio Paz’s Nobel Prize hung by a terminal containing his entire literary corpus, and nobody but Meteor was even looking toward it.</p>
<p>“Hey,” she tapped Monitor, “let’s check out the real stuff.”</p>
<p>“Lead the way.”</p>
<p>She did, and to her great comfort it took her somewhere quieter.</p>
<p>The people in a side hall were there to absorb culture. Holos of famous authors stood by relics of their life: desks, laptops, primitive typewriters. Stephen King flickered a little in his ancient seat. Meteor rushed up to him.</p>
<p>“Wow, they landed King’s actual chair!”</p>
<p>“Mm-hm,” Monitor replied.</p>
<p>“See, King had this enormous desk once. He even wrote about it, how he promised himself early on that when he got successful he’d have one so big it’d fill a room, some colossal wooden thing like an old sailing ship.”</p>
<p>“Mm-hm.”</p>
<p>“But the bigger it got, see, the more alienated he got from his own family…”</p>
<p>“Mm-hm.”</p>
<p>Meteor winced. “I’m boring you with history, aren’t I.”</p>
<p>“I like that you like it,” he assured her.</p>
<p>
  <em>Crap crap crap crap.</em>
</p>
<p>“Hey!” Meteor clapped, a little too strongly. “Wanna check out the Cyberspace wing? The renovation was all for it!”</p>
<p>“I’d like that,” he answered with more conviction.</p>
<p>She hustled down to the Library’s new addition. There, too, stood a curious crowd. One at a time, people walked in and out of a Cyberspace gate, a cutting-edge circle of tech around a faintly staticky lavender ripple in space.</p>
<p>A terminal screen displayed the destinations on offer: Houston, Nairobi, “Point Jakarta” and “Point Galapagos.” A space-link city, a space-mining-company city, the foundation of the first space elevator, and the proposed site of the second. The theme was obvious. It dawned on Meteor that the setting wasn’t only a safe, limited demonstration of the modern wonder that was Cyberspace, but a way to increase interest in space operations among the kind of people who could help fund it.</p>
<p>“The future of transportation,” Monitor read aloud from a convenient sign. “As if warp physics was brand new.”</p>
<p>“Except this isn’t warp physics,” said Meteor. “Not entirely, anyway. Pretty soon the whole world will have a new overlapping layer of reality we can pinch to connect any two points. Or at least that’s how I think it works…”</p>
<p>If it wasn’t, he didn’t correct her. “Want to try it like we’re rich tourists?”</p>
<p>“Absolutely! Just watch out for any killer bugs.”</p>
<p>His eyes smiled. “Hey, I held one off for you already, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”</p>
<p>He held her hand as the two of them waited in the queue. Meteor’s LIFE cell nearly fluttered.</p>
<p>“So where to?” He asked.</p>
<p>“You’re good at picking locations. I’ll leave it to you.”</p>
<p>“Great! I know just the one…”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>The date couple crossed thousands of kilometers in a single step.</p>
<p>The Galapagos Islands were much fewer than in Charles Darwin’s time. Most had disappeared under the sea level. North Isabela was the most populated; most of the modern city of Tortuga Negra had been built with care between the Wolf and Darwin Volcanoes and enjoyed the geothermal energy tap. The exit point for the Cyberspace link sat on top of a squat skyscraper.</p>
<p>“Welcome to the future,” Monitor swept an arm. “Come on, I just bet you can see it from here.”</p>
<p>About twenty well-dressed charity ball guests were at the edge of the roof, enjoying the view. The Hunters join them. The city stretched away in all directions.</p>
<p>Meteor determined exactly where she was: closer to Wolf Volcano, closer to the Equator, closer to Point Galapagos proper. The volcano had already been built over in the fashion of several others she could name. The magma convection far below had been not quelled but tamed, entirely, and modern construction methods made any building there perfectly safe.</p>
<p>Which was good, because out at the edge of the summit, construction crews were starting to make a hole.</p>
<p>“Number two,” Monitor observed. “They don’t have a name for it yet, and I bet they won’t for years. The one at Jakarta’s further along, but foundation work is the biggest hurdle. I mean, sure, the anchorpoint in orbit will take some of the stress, but you’re still talking a colossal load of mass that gravity’s pulling down on one point.”</p>
<p>“You like buildings?” She asked.</p>
<p>“It’s infrastructure, who doesn’t?”</p>
<p>“<em>Yessss</em>,” she kept her glee to a whisper.</p>
<p>“They’re saying Cyberspace will play a bigger role in getting this tower up, but Cain Labs is keeping it under their hat. Makes sense, though – you might have segments built all over the world and just cyber-ported into place.”</p>
<p>“Oh come on, that’s sci-fi.”</p>
<p>“Says the walking talking nuclear fusion reactor,” he nudged her.</p>
<p>“Point,” she smirked back. “Still, I did just stroll to the Equator through a layer of physics we just up and <em>invented</em> because the regular one’s too slow.”</p>
<p>Monitor rested his elbows on the rail and admired the distant digging. It was hard to pick out individual laborers. Most of the other guests moved on to see more interesting angles of the city.</p>
<p>“It’s amazing, really, what we’re doing,” he said. “Humans and reploids both. We might have wrecked the world, but we’re building it so much better. Just how we want, every day, every hour.” He paused. “Meteor?”</p>
<p>She was gradually getting used to him calling her that. She leaned like he did. “Yeah?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know if you ever put much thought into reploids as a people…”</p>
<p>“Oh, I do.”</p>
<p>“How we’re literally the march of technology…”</p>
<p>She scooted closer to him. “Oh yes.”</p>
<p>“Where do you think we’re marching to?”</p>
<p>“You mean, what the future will be like for us?”</p>
<p>“For you specifically, I mean.” He shifted his weight, draped his big hands over the side. “You keep moving forward so hard, you had to have put some thought into where you’re going. Whatever the world turns out to be like, where do you think you’ll be in it? What do you see yourself doing in five, ten years?”</p>
<p>Humans heard that question in school, or in job interviews. It was an entirely different question for a reploid.</p>
<p>Meteor’s commander and mom-friend Turtle, a skilled and decorated leader, had reached the venerable age of seven. Monitor – according to his file that Meteor skimmed – was barely five years old. Her last mission had her commanding people whose time alive could fairly be measured in months. Rare indeed were reploids who saw the end of their first decade. Meteor herself hadn’t, and yet she was old enough to have had four sequential younger siblings – the youngest one lost in the line of duty two wars ago.</p>
<p>She wondered. Five years was so, so much time, in a world that moved so fast.</p>
<p>Meteor doubted she would ever leave public service. But what flavor would service be a lifetime from then? What was most important to her at that moment, and how would that inform her future?</p>
<p>She thought of Skittle, Volt, Deco, Nouveau, Turtle… Atajo, Vitamin, Flurry, Windsor, Datollo… Bakker, Shock, all the rank and file… and the answer came with ease.</p>
<p>“I think I belong here.”</p>
<p>“You <em>think</em>?” He watched her, openly listening.</p>
<p>“I <em>think</em>, in the way that means I could do this forever. Serving and protecting against Mavericks, not just for human civilians but the people who actually do the serving and protecting. My fellow Hunters. My friends. Not just, you know, <em>for everlasting peace</em>,” she waved her hands sarcastically, “but for <em>daily</em> peace. Peace of mind, that there’s somebody reliable on their side. And sure, we’re out there saving the world, but it can be… distancing, out there on the tip of the spear. Who’s the shaft supporting us, keeping us up and pointed?”</p>
<p>She heard what she was saying and closed her mouth.</p>
<p>“Okay that’s a little weird,” she continued, “but do you get what I’m saying? I think I’m in the best place I can be, refining myself so I can support the institution by supporting a few at a time.”</p>
<p>He nodded. “I get that. Small picture as a lens on the big.”</p>
<p>“Right! Right. Sort of. ‘Cause it’s not two things, two sizes. The big picture… it’s made of the small.”</p>
<p>He nodded again, looking out over the city and the first scrapings of construction. A moment passes, drawing Meteor in to fill it.</p>
<p>“What about you, Monitor? Fair’s fair. What do you want your future to be?”</p>
<p>His eyes smiled.</p>
<p>“Would you believe I want to quit?”</p>
<p><em>Um</em>.</p>
<p>“Quit what? The Hunters?”</p>
<p>“Absolutely.” He stood up straighter, pushed off the rail. “I’ve been around long enough to get a grip on the world. Reploids can be anything, anything at all, but so few of us choose to be something worth being. Mavericks are maniacs, full stop,” he firmly chopped the air, “and Repliforce represented the best we could be but then betrayed all of it. All of us.”</p>
<p>Meteor cocked her head. “I’m with you there, but I don’t see how that reflects on the Hunters…”</p>
<p>Monitor’s hands emoted for a face that largely couldn’t. “You think Halcyon is the last Halcyon we’ll ever have? No matter whose butt is in the chair, we’re taking on too much work we weren’t meant for, and it’s showing in the way our ground-level leaders are coping. Over time, Meteor, we’re either going to get more and more militaristic, more and more repressive…” his shoulders sank under invisible weight, “or we’ll splinter into a handful of state-supported merc groups more at war with each other than with actual Mavericks. Peace through fascism or factionalism. That’s where we’re headed.”</p>
<p>Meteor tracked a subtle change in his tone. Somewhere around the mention of Halcyon, confidence became certainty. Iron became steel. If there was one thing that a long study of history had taught her, it was that nothing was certain, but she didn’t object yet. She got the feeling that his speech was a setup to a point he wanted to make.</p>
<p>“You’ve put a lot of thought into this,” was all she offered.</p>
<p>“Right. Because I don’t want either of those worlds.” He stood a little prouder, fists on his hips. “Wonder why I spent forty-kay on a first date? I’m actually a millionaire.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Uh, wow.</em>
</p>
<p>“How?”</p>
<p>He rolled his wrist, “Saved up, worked up, invested wisely. All the time. Resource management comes to me like breathing – I could pull quartermaster duties in my sleep. And someday soon, when I’ve saved up enough to cover five years of expenses, <em>that’s</em> when I’m going to leave the Hunters.” He balled his fist at the horizon. “I’ll suit up and fight Mavericks on my own terms, with my own code of conduct. Ending threats, one Maverick at a time. Saving lives, one city at a time. Building the world I want, one centimeter at a time.”</p>
<p>His fist gently unfolded, and reached down to Meteor.</p>
<p>“And if you ever <em>think</em> you don’t need to be with the Hunters to maintain daily peace… I could use a partner.”</p>
<p>Meteor stared at Monitor’s hand.</p>
<p>A distant explosion brought her back to earth. Well-dressed guests gasped and recoiled.</p>
<p>She looked. He looked.</p>
<p>A corner of the city was on fire.</p>
<p>High overhead, an aircraft – multiple aircraft – blinked out of optical camo. Three Hammerhead cruisers. Repliforce.</p>
<p>A broad-comm message in a polite British dialect hit her ears.</p>
<p>“Attention. I am Spiral Pegasus. For the good of reploidkind, Major Quartus has ordered a tactical neutralization blitz of this area. There is nothing to be gained by resistance. Repliforce Forever.”</p>
<p>The cruisers spawned fliers: bird-shaped manned craft from one, Eagle ride armors from another, and hundreds of smaller mechaniloids from both, twinkling in the night.</p>
<p>The guests cried out and ran for the Cyberspace portal. The formal-armored Library attendants flew to the controls and started entering commands as the humans ran through. Meteor heard screams from the street below.</p>
<p>“Pegasus,” Monitor growled. “He hit Perth a month ago. We have to get up there!”</p>
<p>“The city needs help first!” She objected. “And those guys!” She pointed to the poor Steel Berets who weren’t paid enough for all that.</p>
<p>“Exactly!” He objected back. “We knock out Pegasus and we’ll help them all at once!”</p>
<p>Three Eagle armors approached their position and opened fire. Snaking plasma comets streaked toward the roof and kicked up explosion dust. The last few humans screamed on their way through to safety. The portal blinked out.</p>
<p>“<em>Prioritize, darnit!</em>” Meteor shouted and dashed out to intercept the attackers.</p>
<p>The Eagles were souped-up models, black and purple with oversized thrusters. They orbited each other in a complicated knot of trajectories. One had a buster and a fist. One had two fists. One had two busters.</p>
<p>The armors looked familiar. Their pilots <em>were</em> familiar.</p>
<p>“Well well,” said Maria Alnitak.</p>
<p>“Look who it is,” said Maria Mintaka.</p>
<p>“You’re in the wrong place, Hunter,” said Maria Alnilam.</p>
<p>Las Tres Marias flew in wedge formation straight for Meteor.</p>
<p>“<em>For Captain Decim!</em>”</p>
<p>Meteor charged up her buster. “Monitor, get on defense!”</p>
<p>His mouth guard retracted. “In a minute!”</p>
<p>The Marias scattered. Mintaka lit up her Eagle’s Raiden-like gauntlet blades while Alnitak and Alnilam took to the flanks and opened fire. Meteor greeted Mintaka with a third-stage plasma shot, but her Eagle’s fists were well above standard and her counterpunch mitigated the damage. To her right she heard the thin squeal of lasered metal, but had no time to wonder at the source. She dodged Alnitak’s cannon fire by dashing straight for Mintaka with her Zanbato lighting up. Mintaka swung, scoring a glancing hit on her tail as Meteor grabbed the rim of her cockpit and thrust her saber in.</p>
<p>Mintaka let go of the controls to parry, both of her knives repelling the electromagnetic containment of the ice blade. She swung Meteor’s weapon to one side, instantly frosting the Eagle’s chest.</p>
<p>Meteor opened her mouth, but Mintaka crashed to the roof, throwing her off. She landed dashing, centimeters ahead of Alnitak’s second shot.</p>
<p>Meteor turned to Monitor, who was engaged with Alnilam at range. Alnilam’s Eagle was scarred with a hot glowing line across the chest. He spat some sort of faint laser that raked Alnilam herself across the shoulders and flashed her shields.</p>
<p>“Monitor,” she stowed her saber, “I have this! Get to the—”</p>
<p>Screams. Alnitak had taken her Eagle to the Cyberspace portal. Her one Raiden fist carved through a Steel Beret.</p>
<p>Meteor dashed, but not fast enough. The second operator fell to her cannon. The third raises his buster, but that only made him a priority for her crushing fist and boiling fist-blade.</p>
<p>Meteor leaped on top of her like a vision of hell, spewing flame and swinging ice and plasma. Her shields strobe under the assault. The Repliforce lieutenant found an opening and forced her arm through, but a quick jerk of Meteor’s head sent her buster shot grazing the Hunter’s ear rather than caving in her eye. In a flash of fury Meteor headbutted her, grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her bodily to her left.</p>
<p>The angle of the turn let her see Mintaka’s Eagle coming straight for her, gauntlet blades up.</p>
<p>Monitor tackled her like a freight train, driving his massive shoulder spike through her ride’s left arm and into the cockpit. The Eagle stumbled, skewered, until he <em>threw</em> the ride armor off his shoulder with an immense burst of strength.</p>
<p>The battlefield took a second to reorient itself. Mintaka tried to right her sparking ride armor; Alnitak staggered back up after her savaging; Alnilam landed next to her; Meteor and Monitor approached each other in the middle.</p>
<p>“Nice job,” he thumbed skyward, “I’ll take that empty Eagle and take out—”</p>
<p>Meteor slapped him.</p>
<p>“I said <em>defense!</em>” She erupted, ramming her saber hilt back into its housing on her back. “I can handle these three! What if there were humans left up here?!”</p>
<p>“I’m priori—”</p>
<p>“<em>I don’t wanna hear it!</em> We’re all this place has right now! Now get down to the street and protect some <em>damn lives</em>, Hunter!”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>His eyes twitched. Meteor heard the ominous sound of cannons building charge.</p>
<p>“Copy,” Monitor grunted, and charged for Alnilam. She fired, but the blast hit him like a snowball. She took flight and he continued bull-rushing right under her, over the side of the roof and down to the street. Flashes of enemy plasma fire blinked in what higher windows Meteor could see on neighboring buildings.</p>
<p>It was down to her and the sisters. Mintaka forced her staggering Eagle upright. Alnitak flew under her own power and fired up her traditional saber. Alnilam stayed hovering, training her cannons on Meteor’s position.</p>
<p>Alnitak’s Eagle was unoccupied. The Cyberspace link was undamaged.</p>
<p>“Showa to Fifth—”</p>
<p>Alnilam fired, but not the Eagle’s special multishot seeker charge. Two big plasma comets streaked for exactly where she stood.</p>
<p>She dodged both and took cover behind the ring.</p>
<p>
  <em>Precision strikes. Seeker shots would risk the portal.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>They won’t break it. They need it open.</em>
</p>
<p>“Meteor Showa to Fifth, Point Galapagos is under attack—”</p>
<p>Mintaka flew through the ring, proving definitively that it was unlinked. She banked in midair and came in for a windup punch.</p>
<p>Volt had laid her out with one exactly like it. His was smaller and quicker.</p>
<p>Meteor weaved around it and counterpunched the inside of the ride armor’s elbow with a fist made of sparking drills. The forearm took the abuse for all of a second before it bent in a way it was never designed to.</p>
<p>“—repeat, under attack by Repliforce, blitz led by Spiral Pegasus!”</p>
<p>Mintaka planted a foot on the cockpit rim and drew her knives. Meteor pulled her fist back and fired the drills; the Maria jetboosted out between two of them but tripped their electricity arc. Her shields accepted the blow as she wheeled into a combo – thrust one, miss, slash two, miss, but slash three advertised her surprising reach as it snapped across Meteor’s arm. Meteor accepted the blow and swept the air with her cryomer blade. Mintaka was fast, but the sword was big; she caught the tip in her abdomen. She retreated in a hurry, leaving Meteor out for Alnilam to strafe.</p>
<p>“Fifth here,” replied a female voice Meteor had never heard before, “we copy. Status?”</p>
<p>Meteor used the sensitivity of the Cyberspace portal to her advantage, but Alnilam had good aim. The Maria stayed far enough out to preclude easy counterattacks, but the distance let Meteor’s flex parts outmaneuver even a souped-up Eagle’s cannon.</p>
<p>“Engaged, but listen, I’m at a Cyberspace link—”</p>
<p>Alnitak remounted her Eagle. She shot through the ring to try and catch Meteor in the crossfire, but the Hunter was too dodgy. Meteor retreated to the edge of the roof, forcing pursuit.</p>
<p>“—a link to the Library of the Americas, you need to isolate it from the network!”</p>
<p>“Acknowledged. Tasking available backup on hot-drop. Stand by.”</p>
<p>Mintaka and Alnitak, the melee-capable Marias, flew in. With her Zanbato already out and burning through its active seconds, Meteor dashed under them and straight for the link. She guessed that Alnitak’s Eagle was faster than Mintaka’s boosters, meaning they’d pursue in staggered formation.</p>
<p>She guessed right.</p>
<p>She got within slashing distance of the ring, whipped around and shot a Lockdown jet. It splashed all up in Alnitak’s business, sticking and freezing. Mintaka was already diving for an intercept – far too committed to dodge when Meteor’s fakeout turned on her. She scored a beautiful overhead slash over most of Mintaka’s short body, strobing her shields and forcing her to retreat again. Alnitak’s ride armor audibly creaked from the liquid cryomer in its shoulder, giving Meteor all the microseconds she needed to outspeed its charged shot.</p>
<p>But not Alnilam’s.</p>
<p>“<em>Gyagh</em>—!”</p>
<p>Superior position, superior patience, superior timing. Both barrels of the totally cheating Eagle streaked three seeker shots each, and from all of Meteor’s kinetic distractions she was caught out. The homing devices at the cores of each plasma bloom hammered into Meteor and her angrily flashing shields.</p>
<p>Alnitak capitalized on her flinch, closed the distance and drove her vehicle’s fist under Meteor’s chest. Her feet left the ground and she landed on one knee. Volt’s round-winner didn’t hurt quite that much.</p>
<p>“How’s it feel?” Alnitak rose in her Eagle.</p>
<p>“Such terrible teamwork,” Mintaka hovered warily, sparking, completely out of attack mode and tensed to evade. “No backup of any rank can help the incompetent.”</p>
<p>“We’ll be done in sixty seconds,” Alnilam charged her cannons.</p>
<p>“Or less,” they all agree.</p>
<p>“Make it thirty!” Shouted the newcomer.</p>
<p>A blizzard of orange feathers blew tip-first into the Marias, their team position so conveniently gathered in midair. The darts stuck and packed to their surfaces like anti-snow, smoking on contact from the heat of chemical reaction.</p>
<p>Mintaka, the only one without an Eagle, shrieked under the assault and writhed like a melting witch. Her pain hit a crescendo just as she vanished into a starry stream of emergency beamout segments. Her sisters’ rides smoked and exploded, first Alnitak’s and then Alnilam’s.</p>
<p>“Mintaka!” The latter cried as she abandoned ship.</p>
<p>Las Dos Marias hovered side by side, facing the hot-drop support.</p>
<p>“Lieutenant,” Nouveau nodded, his buster raised. His body lifted off the roof and his hair dramatically spread behind him. “Glad to finally join your fun.”</p>
<p>Meteor spawned two Remote Koi into the rising tide of advantage.</p>
<p>“You’re the best, Captain. Keep the thick one off me!”</p>
<p>Nouveau floated among specks of debris. “Consider it done.”</p>
<p>Nouveau fired a shotgun blast of tiny pointed pyramids, but the fliers broke to let it pass between them.</p>
<p>“The Gravity Elf is here?!” Shouted Alnitak.</p>
<p>“I’ll keep him down!” Shouted Alnilam.</p>
<p>Alnilam opens fire on Nouveau and Meteor left them to it. Her koi zipped out and lasered Alnitak, but whether by some hidden speed boost or sheer anger she darted away from both and came for Meteor, saber lit to run her through.</p>
<p>Meteor flashed out both sabers and fired her dash for a high-speed scissor swipe.</p>
<p>Alnitak banked left, parried the Gaia Sword swipe and rode the force of the swing. Meteor’s own hit swatted her to her left, where the Maria’s back-booster rocketed her into Meteor’s side with a heavy thrust clashing off her life-saving shields.</p>
<p>It hurt.</p>
<p>But Alnitak had delivered herself deep inside Meteor’s reach.</p>
<p>Meteor stomped her front foot and whirled a two-handed 180 spin; Spectrod would have laughed at it, but Alnitak didn’t. The Zanbato arced across her knees. The cryomer starter splashes through her right leg. The lemondrop hibeam finisher carves straight through her left. Only her rear booster kept her aloft – until both Remote Koi made like fireworks and exploded into her back.</p>
<p>Alnitak crashed to the roof. Her laboring shields couldn’t take it.</p>
<p>“We won’t… we’re a team…!”</p>
<p>She hit the crystal on her right shoulder and burst not into a rolling detonation but a constellation of emergency beamout spheres like her sister before her.</p>
<p>Nouveau was in midair, enveloped in by a sphere of blue lightning, weathering a barrage of second-stage plasma shots from Alnilam’s busters.</p>
<p>Alnitak’s escape diverted her attention. “Sister!”</p>
<p>Nouveau’s barrier burst like an electric bubble and he returned fire with overlarge yellow plasma shots.</p>
<p>“Lieutenant, swarm her!”</p>
<p>Meteor swapped her fist for a drill and added lightning triangles to the barrage.</p>
<p>Alnilam treated the sparkdrills like the bigger threat and tanked Nouveau’s barrage.</p>
<p>She threw up her elbows, busters bunched behind her head, “I’ll show YOU a swarm!”</p>
<p>A bright pink sphere flashes around her as her busters launched a dozen plasma shots each, streaking like a meteor shower.</p>
<p>In the same instant, Meteor shot an Arbor Wall and Nouveau hid in his bubble. Alnilam’s counterbarrage slammed the roof, reducing the wood to splinters.</p>
<p>The gunner flew to Meteor’s side, busters up and glowing—</p>
<p>An off-white arrow, so geometrically perfect it was the <em>idea</em> of an arrow, skimmed Meteor’s cheek so close it scraped her paint. It plugged Alnilam’s buster, stuck down her forearm and exited her elbow. Her entire arm exploded from the backfire and she spun out on her jetboots.</p>
<p>Nouveau descended, the toes of his boots hovering a centimeter above the roof. “Cut your jets and surrender or my next shot going through your nose!”</p>
<p>Maria Alnilam held her arm stump. “You haven’t learned, for we…” she trailed off as if expecting someone to pick up her line. She glanced around. “Oh. Oh well.” She threw her fist to the sky. “<em>Open gate!</em>”</p>
<p>Alnilam vanished in a warp column.</p>
<p>“Fifth,” Meteor touched her ear, “track beamout!”</p>
<p>“Already lost,” said the mystery female navigator, “we’re getting static on the C-axis layer!”</p>
<p>“The what?”</p>
<p>“Cyberspace interference,” she clarified. “But it makes no sense, I cut the area off myself…”</p>
<p>Nouveau settled his boots to the roof and flipped hair over his shoulder. “‘Open gate’ are the magic words, I suppose?”</p>
<p>“We’ll deal with it later,” Meteor headed to the roof edge, “there’s still a blitz going on. Monitor, you copy?”</p>
<p>“Copy,” he grunted. “Muddling through down here. Broke a couple Eagles and now they’re avoiding me. I don’t think I’m getting to Pegasus.”</p>
<p>“Captain,” she began, “I think you’re better applied up—”</p>
<p>One of the Hammerhead cruisers started exploding. An unidentifiable figure flew out of it and moved on to the next, peppering it with streaming flares. A different figure chased one of the bird-shaped manned craft and was chased in turn by four others; it banked hard and smacked its pursuers with an impressive gout of flame, bursting them in midair.</p>
<p>Meteor shaded her eyes at the flashing destruction. “Um.”</p>
<p>“We’re aware,” the navigator replied. “Elements of the Columbus Seventh are now on-site to assist you two and Monitor. Five officers should be enough to stop one platoon. Orders for all of you: pick your targets and keep people safe.”</p>
<p>“We’re on it,” said Meteor.</p>
<p>“Impressive promptness, navigator,” said Nouveau. “Are you one of ours?”</p>
<p>“Oh, sorry. I’m Alia with the Geneva Sixteenth, just filling in with the Fifth. I’ve got the site well in hand, so don’t hesitate to call. Good hunting.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>And it was good.</p>
<p>The mechaniloids were only harassers; the Eagles they encountered landed quickly. Occasionally a manned craft flew overhead, followed fast by a streak of red.</p>
<p>Meteor’s injuries weren’t enough to affect what quickly became a mop-up operation. Between her Arbor Walls and Nouveau’s gravitics, they shored up collapsing structures and directed people away from the worst of it.</p>
<p>Tortuga Negra was not a huge city, nor did Pegasus bring a huge enemy force. It was all over inside half an hour.</p>
<p>Meteor didn’t see a trace of or hear a word from Monitor until he, she, and Nouveau gathered at the construction site to survey the damage. It was hard to wreck a hole, but Pegasus’s forces did it. Builders lay dead. Power conduits were scrap and strings. Further up the volcano stood the ruins of a geothermal tap. Whatever strategic danger a space elevator foundation held for Repliforce, the blitz had apparently removed it.</p>
<p>“Set it back years,” Monitor shook his head. “What the hell.”</p>
<p>“One less resource for the world?” Nouveau guessed.</p>
<p>“For humans,” Meteor supposed.</p>
<p>“I counted sixteen dead,” Nouveau kept his tone level. “The real damage was to the infrastructure. The volcano siphon is a total loss. There will be brownouts for months.”</p>
<p>“Terrorists,” Meteor grumbled.</p>
<p>“Mavericks,” Monitor grumbled as well.</p>
<p>“Pity it had to spoil your date,” Nouveau seemed genuine in his sympathy. It only made things worse.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” said Meteor.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Monitor agreed.</p>
<p>The Cyberspace link underwent a battery of tests to confirm it was in working order. At the end, the officers of the Veracruz Fourth stepped through.</p>
<p>To riotous applause.</p>
<p>Every suit and dress at the party moved in a torrent of claps and cheers. Hovering news cameras caught the triumphant return.</p>
<p>Nouveau came alive at the attention.</p>
<p>“<em>Your heroes have returned!</em> Let’s hear it for the Veracruz Fourth Overland Unit!” He hammed to the cameras, pausing for a rush of happy noise. “It’s fine officers like <em>these</em> two, with modest assistance from myself, that show just how vital Overland is to our fine city!”</p>
<p>“Sorry we couldn’t do more,” Monitor stepped up, knowing an opportunity when he saw one. “Pegasus was just out of reach.”</p>
<p>“It’s fine,” Nouveau edged closer to the cameras, “Lieutenant Iron Monitor here was a true hero to the people stuck on the streets.”</p>
<p>Monitor side-eyed Meteor. She stepped forward, blocking Nouveau from the cameras.</p>
<p>“He certainly was. After assisting me with three Repliforce officers, Monitor prioritized the safety of the local populace at great personal risk. He played to his strengths and applied his skills well. Nouveau and I had little to do after he rolled through.”</p>
<p>Applause rolled again. Monitor looked away.</p>
<p>Nouveau butted in front of both of them.</p>
<p>“Now I believe Governor Alvarez has similar sentiments to share – oh, and – is that – Mister President! Let him through, please sir, come – <em>Focalizar! </em>Move aside!”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>In the end, after all the smiling for cameras and shaking of hands, once the politicos and anchors bled off, Meteor found herself out on the steps of the Library of the Americas with a datapad, reading perfect scans of books predating the age of robots. She heard what could only be Monitor’s heavy footsteps descend. They stopped a few steps behind her.</p>
<p>“Stephen King?” He asked.</p>
<p>“Murakami Haruki.”</p>
<p>“Oh.”</p>
<p>A couple of guests walked by, down to a waiting valet. They let the Hunters be.</p>
<p>“Look, um, Monitor…”</p>
<p>Meteor had prepared an essay in her head. Monitor burned it with just two words.</p>
<p>“Poor match?”</p>
<p>“Poor match.”</p>
<p>He took the last few steps and sat next to her. “I understand. No harm done.”</p>
<p>“Well, a little harm. Sorry I slapped you.”</p>
<p>“Don’t be. Just shows you can get heated. As if your name didn’t, heh.”</p>
<p>“Heh. Yeah.” She put away her pad. “Thanks for showing me a good time. However long you end up staying, I’m glad you’re here.”</p>
<p>“Glad to be. Still…” He held out his hand, meaningfully. “If you ever get dissatisfied with the Hunters… if you ever want a taste of freedom…”</p>
<p>She looked at his hand.</p>
<p>She took his hand.</p>
<p>She turned it over and patted it, in pity.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:<br/>“Outer Space Development”</p>
<p>Though humans have long desired the colonization and development of territory beyond Earth, doing so on an economic scale had proven impossible until the 21st century’s development of new, nigh-unlimited energy sources powering new discoveries in physics.</p>
<p>“Mining Worlds” was a legal distinction from “Settlement Worlds” such as Luna and Mars, or theoretical “Energy Worlds” like Mercury or the gas giants. A Mining World could be anything from a planetoid to a planet, but colloquially the term meant the bio-hostile moons of the gas giants, such as Titan or Callisto. Exploration outside the Solar System was given over to mere probes while humans, androids, and eventually reploids worked to harvest all they could reach between Sol and the Oort Belt. (Even after a century of such labor, the Solar System’s resource potential remains 99% unharnessed.)</p>
<p>The unprecedented influx of raw materials allowed Earth to produce space colonies before the 21st century was over. Japan led the way in this technology and its implementation, and even set the precedent of naming colonies after continents and major geologic landforms – real or fictional.</p>
<p>Orbital elevators are a newer technology. Albert Wily infamously engineered the first structure capable of manually transferring payloads into low-earth orbit, though in a rather slapdash way. His Roboenza scheme allowed him to purchase an aging Mining World landing station already in orbit; he simply flew it in stationary sync above an existing facility for long enough to build downward. When the piloting program was shut off, the structure collapsed under its own weight. This halted investor interest in orbital elevators for the next century.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Mission 9: Sounding Humpback</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meteor reaches the final Maverick of her roster: an ex-Hunter she was responsible for not discharging when she had the chance. Meteor faces off against pirates and other perils of the sea.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“<em>You dumped him?!</em>”</p>
<p>Skittle, a frazzled bundle of shock and awe, looked at Meteor like she’d torched the family farm.</p>
<p>“Not that it’s any of your business,” she looked away, fully repaired and freshly rested, to admire the larger upgrade lab, “but it was a mutual amicable turning-down. No dumping involved.”</p>
<p>“But it seemed like such a smart match!” Golau whined.</p>
<p>“It wasn’t really. Great guy, don’t get me wrong, but he’s too… goal-driven.”</p>
<p>“Comin’ from <em>you, like?!</em>” Skittle laughed.</p>
<p>“Coming from me. It’s just that his goals are so big I’m not sure anybody would fit in them if they didn’t already have similar ones. I would’ve been a sidekick.”</p>
<p>“Aw hell, one of <em>those</em> guys,” Skittle flipped their wrist. “Forget him then, you got better things to do.”</p>
<p>“It’s not like that, we’re still unitmates. And he followed me on Bustr! He mostly reshoots weapon designs and Australian prog-rock.”</p>
<p>Skittle planted their hands on Meteor’s shoulders and hung their head. “Oh my god fishflake you dodged a cannonball. But hey,” they snapped their neck up, “at least you got some first-response payout for that crappy date.”</p>
<p>That helped. “Did I?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, ten kay. Puts you at ninety, it does.”</p>
<p>“Shall we get to upgrades, then?” Golau clapped. “That’ll get your mind off him!”</p>
<p>“Couldn’t agree more, Your Grace.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>&gt; VWES Options:</p>
<p>something something the bomb, come up with something clever later, self</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Clutch Bomb (Proximity)” – Girtabomb’s only DNA weapon, the super versatile bane of many racers: a trio of spherical bombs that will adhere to any surface. Very easy to mod for increased damage and added effects. After sticking, each detonates by proximity to any hostile target, and there’s no limit to how many may be deployed at once. Turtle actually has something similar, but these won’t number in the thousands like hers. 18 shots, for 54 bombs.</p>
<p>“Clutch Bomb (Trigger)” – The same weapon, but with a different triggering method. Whether stuck or in flight, each will detonate only at your order, but you can only deploy nine at once. Any more and the oldest three will just auto-pop.</p>
<p>Synergy:</p>
<p>I tell ya, Meteor, I could spend hours coming up with flavors for this weapon. You can only bind it to one other DNA set, of course, and it goes without saying that any weapon is consumed in the combo.</p>
<p>“Frost Bomb” – Combines with Freezer Ostenops’s DNA to add a liquid cryomer burst effect to each bomb. Splat zones on floors and walls are zero-friction. 12 shots.</p>
<p>“Sap Bomb” – Combines with Arbor Elk’s DNA to add a detonation charge to each and every Arbor Wall. Each Wall will arm itself three seconds after formation. After arming, if a wall is hit or touched in any way, it’ll explode; danger close. If the Arbor Wall seed lands on an enemy, the constriction roots will simply explode after three seconds. 12 shots.</p>
<p>“Carpette Bomb” – Combines with Remote Koi. Launches two koi at once, but they’ll automatically and aggressively seek out the nearest hostile for a kamikaze run. Previous upgrades to the koi make this a terrifying option indeed: high-evasion, long-range, fish-shaped fire-burst homing missiles, each impacting with the violence of a high-phase saber. The damage output of two such fish at once would make this – on paper – your strongest weapon. 12 shots.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>&gt; come up with a bloody title for this bit later too</p>
<p>“Chaser Dash” – Girty had some sweet dash parts. With this, your EAS can take you as far as a ride armor’s dash. The time it takes to cover that distance, combined with your short-cycle dash modification, means that with proper timing you can now achieve pretty much continuous velocity. Certain foes may still outspeed you, however, especially in bursts. 40,000z.</p>
<p>“Energy Capacitor” – Why’d you even ask for this if you’re not gonna buy it, huh? Still 30,000z.</p>
<p>“Hinoiki” – No word of it a lie, Golau thought of this one. It’ll cost for parts and labor, but we can evolve your Meteor Melter to its final form. It’ll take your Prominence and merge it with the Volcano option via the “explosion element” of Girtabomb’s DNA. Result? Charge up a stage beyond ol’ Prom and you’ll breathe a huge frontal cone of thermite. 30,000z.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor nearly drooled, but she didn’t want to ruin the floor.</p>
<p>“Oh man that dash would’ve come in such handy. Gimme gimme. And did you name the Hinoiki yourself?”</p>
<p>“I did, I did!” Golau waved. “It means ‘Breath of Fire’ – but well of course you knew that.”</p>
<p>“I’ll take it, it sounds super cool.” Meteor rubbed Golau’s fuzzy head. The fairy giggled.</p>
<p>Skittle sharply coughed. “What else? Got more than enough dosh to replace that butterfly shield you broke.”</p>
<p>“Oh? I thought it was a one-off.”</p>
<p>“It’s not a DNA thingy, it’s just a bit of gear, like a saber. I was thinking of selling the schematics, actually, shore up my funds.”</p>
<p>“Is that legal?”</p>
<p>“Nope!” They smiled wide.</p>
<p>“Well if it’ll keep you from criminal behavior, give me another. Oh, and stick Fluid Lockdown in those stickies and get me the trigger version. I can think of a few great uses for them.”</p>
<p>“Bet you can. Your last Mav, this Humpback – she’ll be underwater, yeah?”</p>
<p>Meteor turned her eyes to the floor. “Yeah.”</p>
<p>“The dash works underwater, too. Coupled with your agility, she won’t know what hit ‘er.”</p>
<p>“I’m counting on it,” Meteor kept her tone carefully neutral. “It’ll synergize well with the deployment I’m considering.”</p>
<p>“Right then.” Skittle clap-clapped at their twin, “Order up! Gonna need some Dodo-class leg cables for this one!”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor beamed down on an Aspidochelone-class platform ship, a light carrier vessel. Three others floated nearby, all harmless-looking octagons serving as observation posts and wave-chaser launchers. Each platform only had one wall along three of its eight sides, a shade for terminals and equipment and beam-in pads.</p>
<p>A blue reploid, clearly a Cabochon Larimar, shot out of the waves and boarded the ship in a three-point landing. Like every other member of her type, she had fins, vents, and compact inlined propellers… but as she approached Meteor could see she was off-model. Her blue was deeper, her fins larger, her stride full of confidence. A more advanced Larimar, maybe, or higher-spec…</p>
<p>“Welcome aboard. I’m Captain Sapphire, Geneva Sixth.”</p>
<p>… Or the original model.</p>
<p>“Meteor Showa, Veracruz Fourth,” she saluted. “Are you <em>the</em>—”</p>
<p>“—One and only big sister of every single member of the Janken-Two and Cabochon series?” Sapphire rattled off like it was her middle name. “That I am.”</p>
<p>“Sorry, Captain,” Meteor rubbed behind her head, “you probably get that question a lot.”</p>
<p>“Less than you might think. More people just ask why I’m still Rank B.”</p>
<p>“You’re Rank B?”</p>
<p>“There, see?” Sapphire smirked.</p>
<p>
  <em>Oh heck, a few seconds in and I’m already chewing my foot.</em>
</p>
<p>“Sorry ma’am, I just thought… y’know, given how long you’ve been around…”</p>
<p>Sapphire casually crossed her wrists behind her back. “I’m good at my own pace, thanks. I know from experience what happens when you push yourself too hard.” She seemed distracted by a thought, but the moment evaporated before Meteor could fully read her face. “But I bet you get more questions than I ever do. Saw you fight Morpho! Good job.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, my hunts keep showing up on live feeds. Not my preference, but hey, it gives the Hunters a good rep.”</p>
<p>Sapphire smartly turned on her heel and stepped over to a terminal. “And we’re thankful, but this one definitely won’t be broadcast. The butterfly was running more of the show than we thought. Absent her, we’re now able to block transmissions out of the wave farm – sorry, the <em>Free State of Light</em>,” she sarcastically added, bringing up multiple high-quality camera angles on the rogue microstate. “Plus we have eyes above, eyes below, eyes all around. No jamming, and three clear entry vectors. You don’t need me to point ‘em out.”</p>
<p>The Free State was an overbuilt drilling rig anchored on the ocean floor. The part above the waves put Meteor in mind of the long-since-demolished Kowloon Walled City: a motley reef of packed-in buildings and connections between them, perpetually under construction with radial asymmetry. It looked like a mess to fight through. Lucky for her, Soun— her Maverick was permanently aquatic.</p>
<p>The points of entry were indeed clear. Long segmented tubes extended from part of the city-state’s foundation and bobbed on the waves like a flat man-o-war, converting motion to energy. Makeshift docks held multiple classes of sea vessel, from yachts to reclaimed scout-ships to what Meteor was pretty sure were fishing trawlers. One big overhanging edge was studded with unregulated cannons on the tops of buildings.</p>
<p> “So with all those eyes,” she asked, “what else are we looking at?”</p>
<p>“A big problem.” Sapphire brought up recordings of multiple yachts outfitted for war, onboard cannons and missile batteries clashing with the wealthy designs. Each one flew a flag of thorny roses. “Humpback took the yachts that the Salty Roses captured the other day and packed them with combat-ready humans. We can’t just torpedo the things without killing dozens of people each, never mind the fact that some of the owners still want their boats back.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Darn it, Sound…</em>
</p>
<p>“Wait, they do? Wouldn’t a tenure as a pirate vessel hurt the value?”</p>
<p>“Are you kidding? That’d put at least another zero on the auction price.”</p>
<p>“All right, true enough. And the reploid pirates?”</p>
<p>“Interesting wrinkle. They’ve made friends.” Sapphire brought up more old footage. Specks of Knot Berets guarded heavy crates on a school of green flat-top whales – Cruizilers – that joined up with the yachts. A dark blue figure, smaller than the ships but much bigger than the Knots, rose from the waves between them.</p>
<p>“Repliforce,” Meteor grumbled. “Who’s that in the water?”</p>
<p>The view zoomed in and provided file data. Sapphire summarized. “Tidal Whale, a known Maverick and black-market materials dealer working out of a ruined ocean colony. He used to be small-fry until he stole the U-555.”</p>
<p>“He <em>what?</em>”</p>
<p>“Yeah, robbed it from Baltimore when everybody was busy with Operation Rama.”</p>
<p>“But it’s pre-reploid!” Meteor erupted. “It belongs in a museum!”</p>
<p>“Hey, no argument there,” Sapphire shook her head. “Stealing it gave him a lot more clout – enough to broker a deal between Repliforce and Humpback. Now the pirates are enjoying Maverick <em>and</em> Repliforce equipment.”</p>
<p>“Outstanding,” Meteor shook her head. “Is Whale still here?”</p>
<p>“No, he and his pet submarine are back home, but this deal definitely bumped him up our retirement list.”</p>
<p>It was one less thing to worry about, but it let her main worry come to the surface.</p>
<p>“How many humans are still there?”</p>
<p>“Two thousand one hundred six. That’s one hundred percent. Not a single adult or child unaccounted-for.”</p>
<p>“They brought <em>kids?</em>”</p>
<p>“Really truly. Crazy, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>Meteor palmed her forehead. “What would the Mavericks get by leaving humans alive? Why is that a benefit? And what human in their right mind would stick around <em>after</em> Repliforce got involved with their ‘Free State?’” She air-quoted.</p>
<p>“Hey, Mavericks need zenny too,” Sapphire shrugged. “I can’t begin to tell you how much business they do with pirates, human or otherwise. As for the humans, they’re all desperate or dumb enough to knowingly join with ‘political Mavericks’ in the first place. They’re just the kind of people who’re committed to really, really bad decisions.”</p>
<p>“Still, to stay there even after Sound tied them to Repliforce…”</p>
<p>Sapphire eyed her with accusation in her tone. “Community’s a powerful thing, Lieutenant Showa, and <em>Humpback</em> defends her own. As you well know.”</p>
<p>Meteor closed her eyes.</p>
<p>“I am completely committed to this mission, Captain.”</p>
<p>“Good. But given that we’re the ones keeping her as contained as possible here, I ask that you indulge me. Why you didn’t decommission her when you were in the Veracruz Sixth?”</p>
<p>Meteor awkwardly palmed her neck, putting the right words together.</p>
<p>“She’s big,” she began. “Not just in body but personality. She was kind. Charismatic. Tough. Eager to serve. Maverick Hunters need all of that. But for my part specifically, I found Humpback… compelling.”</p>
<p>Sapphire gave her the worst kind of Look. It was cool and patient.</p>
<p>“We never hooked up,” Meteor hastened to add, “it was a one-sided crush and I got over it a long time ago. We haven’t spoken since Jet Stingray destroyed Charleston and now I want nothing but to retire her. But as to your question, completely aside from our sunk and buried friendship is the undeniable fact that she’s <em>rare</em>. If you’ve seen her file, you know how old she is. One of the first hundred bespoke reploids, one of the largest ever, still alive and fighting after all this time.”</p>
<p>Sapphire glared harpoons.</p>
<p>“I know, I know, it’s my fault she’s still battleworthy. But I’m—before I was a Hunter I was a historian. She’s living history, Captain. Decommissioning her when she still had more to give…”</p>
<p>“Would’ve saved us a lot of grief.”</p>
<p>“I know. Sorry. But here I am to make it right.”</p>
<p>“That you are, Lieutenant.” Sapphire pointed at a neighboring platform ship. “Your deployments are ready. Clever choice. Whichever entry vector you pick will be treated as one-third of the diameter, and we’ll keep them busy at the other two. Humpback’s in guard-orbit around her city-state’s support column. Send her down with every other shipwreck.”</p>
<p>“Understood,” Meteor muttered. She moved to the edge.</p>
<p>“Oh, and Lieutenant…”</p>
<p>“Yes?”</p>
<p>Sapphire held her elbows and examines the sky. “I read your file… you have some siblings. One killed in action. I just wanted you to know, I know <em>exactly</em> what it feels like to lose family.”</p>
<p>The pain wasn’t one she could forget. There’s nothing to say, until Sapphire looked back down and pointed straight at her.</p>
<p>“Don’t you dare let <em>your</em> family feel that again. If you make me have to write a condolence letter I’ll spin your hull on a stick, understand?”</p>
<p>“Yes ma’am.”</p>
<p>“Then make them proud. Good hunting.”</p>
<p>Meteor saluted and dove into the sea.</p>
<p>Under the water line, the platform ships were shaped vaguely like sea turtles. Larimars hustled between each one, swimming via thrusters, readying to move out.</p>
<p>A colossal jellyfish awaited her.</p>
<p>The Hotareeca mechaniloid torpedo platform had long since been discontinued on account of redundancy, high manufacturing cost, and an unfortunate association with Dr. Doppler. Regardless, the Darwin Sixth had a few mothballed ones in storage. It had cost nearly her whole deployment budget.</p>
<p>
  <em>Monitor really came through. Poor match, but a great unitmate.</em>
</p>
<p>A male-type Larimar, one of Sapphire’s mass-production family, was checking out its launcher. A meter-long solid-alloy harpoon hung magnetically on his back.</p>
<p>“Wonderful thing, no?” He smiled and affected a bit of a French accent, speaking as clearly underwater as he would have in air. “The tentacles flail so wild they can barely aim, but who needs to smack when you have missiles? Homings in triplicate, depth charges in… sexplicate? Lovely, lovely,” he stroked its glassy bell.</p>
<p>“I’m counting on it to be our muscle. Jacques, right?”</p>
<p>He touched his chest, shook his head. “Oh where <em>are</em> my manners? Yes, Lieutenant, pleased to meet you. Denned in Montreal, lest you wonder, though it’s not half as lovely as Sendai these days.”</p>
<p>Meteor nodded. “I’ll make sure you get back there. You ready?”</p>
<p>“Both of us are, madame.”</p>
<p>“Showa to Fifth, you got me?”</p>
<p>“Loud and clear, fishlady,” Atajo replied.</p>
<p>“All right.” She cued in her operation coordinator too. “Sapphire, we’re going by way of the wave farm. Deep approach.”</p>
<p>“Copy. See you on the other side.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor, Jacques, and her new pet headed out at a low angle. The Hotareeca moved with a steady hum while Jacques, silent by comparison, played escort. Open sea missions tended to cover significant operative area, and even at speed it took ten minutes to reach the periphery. By the time they did, the water was rich dark blue despite determined sunbeams forcing their glow into the deep.</p>
<p>“Just did a mine sweep,” Atajo pinged. “Mine Tortoises in abundance. They’re thicker on your path, but keep to that depth you’re at and they shouldn’t bother you.”</p>
<p>“Will do. Mechaniloids?”</p>
<p>“Oh, tons. Right now I see a school of Fisherns and… looks like they’re hunting packs for Poseidons.”</p>
<p>“How many?”</p>
<p>“Three Kings, three apiece.”</p>
<p>“Jacques?”</p>
<p>“Ready, madame.”</p>
<p>Meteor spawned two Remote Koi. “Don’t get nipped.”</p>
<p>A formation of a dozen hostiles emerged from the depth: three King Poseidons and their Fishern pets, as advertised. Not as advertised: the inactive Star Mine on each Poseidon’s back.</p>
<p>The spinners came alive—</p>
<p>“New signals!” Atajo warned—</p>
<p>And the deep blue battlefield became a mess of movement.</p>
<p>The weak Fisherns advanced first. The Hotareeca spewed homing missiles in threes, Jacques picked his targets and rapid-fired his buster, and the miniature showas started lasering what was nearest. The Star Mines shrugged off all crossfire and did a much better job of screening than the quickly-falling school. They still failed to Meteor’s agility.</p>
<p>Her Chaser Dash laughed at their erratic buzzsawing and took her straight to their King Poseidon masters. She gave the center one a taste of her Melter rocket and followed up with buster fire; down he went. Left and right, the other two attempted to pincer-thrust her, but she shoot out of there and reassigned her koi to target them. One tried a trident thrust, but she twisted away like an acrobat and spat another rocket in a Star Mine’s zigzag path. The starfish collided and melted and burst before even scratching the Hotareeca.</p>
<p>Meteor led a parade, the King Poseidon following her and Jacques following it. The Maverick mechaniloid soon spotted him and turned around with a trident swing, but Jacques slipped under it, buried his harpoon in the Poseidon’s stomach and swung its body into the Star Mines’ path. The starfish embedded in the hapless fishman and explode under her Remote Koi lasering.</p>
<p>First engagement: clear as the sea, zero damage.</p>
<p>“Excellent form, Lieutenant!”</p>
<p>“Not bad yourself!”</p>
<p>“Yo Meteor,” said Atajo, “Sapphire’s crew just engaged, better keep up the pace.”</p>
<p>“Doing it. What’s it look like?”</p>
<p>“So much freaking movement. I see some big guns firing and I’m reading some high-energy movement between you and the city.”</p>
<p>“Continuing at current depth.”</p>
<p>She spotted the next hurdle, a field of more Star Mines buzzing around and crossing each others’ paths in set patterns. Several Gulpfers – “active restraint” blowfish piranhas – idly paced. It was a screening wall, more efficient than simple mines for the price.</p>
<p>Meteor raised her fist in a hold-position signal. The Hotareeca halted.</p>
<p>“Jacques, pick off some Gulpfers here. Gimme a sec with the rest, gonna punch a hole for our mechaniloid.”</p>
<p>“Aye. Her name’s Madeline by the way.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Sure, why not.</em>
</p>
<p>It took only a moment to discern each spinner’s pattern and spatial hub. Meteor entered the fray with confidence and cleared the space with perfect shot economy. Her raw thermite didn’t shoot as far, but with the speed and specs she melted each one and emerged ungrazed. The Hotareeca stayed put and fefmissiles to the Gulpfers in range; Jacques buster-plinked them down with alacrity.</p>
<p>Meteor swam through the neat, spinnerless, otherwise fishless hole in the fence and waved Jacques in.</p>
<p>“Big targets inbound!” Atajo warned.</p>
<p>A powerful force of suction pulled her out of her clearing and into the gauntlet.</p>
<p>The surprise was worse than the actual pull. She darted between the Star Mines, but one still raked across her back and made her flash.</p>
<p>The giant Anglerge mechaniloid in the deep activated its spotlight. So did its twin. Meteor spat a Melter rocket and reached for her sabers, but the Anglerges switched from suck to blow and blasted her back through the spinner screen.</p>
<p>Meteor dashed against the push, stalling her in two cases where lacking it would’ve earned her more scrapes. The force current ended when she reached the other side.</p>
<p>Jacques swam up. “Orders, madame?”</p>
<p>Meteor strategized quickly. “They didn’t start sucking ‘til I actually entered the screening, so… okay. Come with me, ride the tow, shoot over top of them and don’t look back. Our fire support’s going to be danger-close…”</p>
<p>Under her HUD orders, the Hotareeca – Madeline, evidently –swam closer to the edge of the Star Mine range and spewed more traditional mines as the Remote Koi protected it. Meteor and Jacques crossed over, and on cue the suction pulled them in – along with the explosives.</p>
<p>Navigating the spinner pattern through the pull was much easier with forewarning. The Hunters slipped through like minnows, and about half the jellyfish’s mines made it through. As ordered, Jacques joined her in dashing out of the suction range, which brought the mines right into the sucking maws. One of the spotlights broke off.</p>
<p>The sturdy Anglerges swam apart and spawned sea serpents. Jacques took his harpoon in his non-buster hand and made short work of the ones hunting him. Meteor bustered down three, charged her Melter and stayed out of one line of Anglerge suction – but the other blew her into it. It had no time to regret its decision as Meteor slashed over its face and down its side with her Gaia Sword, trailing holographic petals all the way. The stake engaged at the end, spearing through the mechaniloid’s tail. She snapped it off, holstered the hilt, and hammered the stake in with a palm strike as her charge reached max.</p>
<p>Meteor bent back, chambered her fists, threw her head forward and released her Breath of Fire – her <em>Hinoiki</em>.</p>
<p>It was like ripping open a geothermal vent.</p>
<p>The spray area was mitigated by the seawater, but she was point-blank. Molten metal exploded from her mouth, thundering through the Anglerge’s hull and burning out its insides. A sheet of churning bubbles cascaded straight up. The creature began exploding and sinking and exploding some more.</p>
<p>She broke contact, ordered Madeline to approach, and looked to Jacques again. His plasma-pocked foe sucked against his dash, stalling him… but the suction brought in new mines from above, and he lacked the agility to escape. One burst hard against his collar. His shields absorbed another.</p>
<p>“<em>Tabarnak!</em>” He swore.</p>
<p>Meteor looked up. <em>Where’d those mines—</em></p>
<p>A giant yellow coelacanth joined the fray. It was a Sea Canthller, a true tank of the deep, dribbling mines from its mouth.</p>
<p>
  <em>Crap.</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor kamikaze’d her drones into the Anglerge, slipping them between its suction fans and detonating. It set the mechaniloid on a death rumble.</p>
<p>“Jacques, protect Madeline!”</p>
<p>“Aye!”</p>
<p>Meteor positioned herself under the Sea Canthller’s falling mines and switched to Arbor Wall.</p>
<p>The seed drank the abundant water and instantly sprang to life as a sturdy plank that flew faster than Meteor could ever swim.</p>
<p>It took out mine after mine, clonked into the tankfish’s breast edge-on and spun off to keep rising.</p>
<p>Meteor formed another Wall underneath her and rode it up.</p>
<p>The Canthller swept a long laser at her in response, but her platform moved far too fast to hit. The mechaniloid’s pectoral fins shot a pair of missiles, but Meteor kicked off the Wall and they tracked the wood instead as it disappeared above. She switched to Frost Bomb, peppered its structural weaknesses with nine sticky bombs, swamdashed out and triggered them all.</p>
<p>Rapid-fire concussive bursts of liquid ice gave the submarine fish a terrible time, even more so when they froze solid an instant later. Its jaw broke off, its eyes popped, its fins snapped yet held on by stringy bridges of ice. Its body gave up, rupturing and shattering its hull, sending ice-stuck pieces floating high.</p>
<p>“Jacques, status?”</p>
<p>Jacques swam back up with the Hotareeca close behind. “A snake bit her, but she’s proving quite sturdy.”</p>
<p>“How about you?”</p>
<p>He held his chest. “Not fond of those mines, madame, but still fit for service.”</p>
<p>“Then—”</p>
<p>Atajo comms in, “Shelling!”</p>
<p>An artillery shell breached the surface and spiraled to Meteor’s depth. It cracked open, releasing half a dozen sea horses that spun into wheels and zigzagged toward her.</p>
<p>She slammed her mental Open Fire button and Madeline obliged. Its – her? – missiles popped every Sea Attacker seahorse before they made contact.</p>
<p>“Orders?” Jacques prompted.</p>
<p>Meteor looked out to the distant shape of the Free State’s supporting shaft. It was uphill – up-mountain, technically, right at the top of a peak in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It looked like a simple minute’s sprint away, but the space between was speckled with spiky, turtle-like mechaniloids. The Mine Tortoises – she hated that name for inaccuracy – floated in place.</p>
<p>“Stick with Madeline,” she ordered, speeding ahead, “and pick off anything that comes at you.”</p>
<p>“Aye madame!”</p>
<p>“Sapphire! We’re closing in. Do what you can to keep the pirates from shelling us!”</p>
<p>“Will attempt,” Sapphire replied.</p>
<p>The assault became a run. Pirate artillery breached into the team’s danger zone, and the slow speed of the jellyfish missile platform exposed them to many, but the tradeoff in offense took out the wave of spinning sea horses meaning to collide.</p>
<p>A second wave and even a third were no match for the Hunters’ combined firepower.</p>
<p>And then the Sea Attackers attacked the turtles.</p>
<p>The Mine Not-Tortoises’ heads and flippers broke off, releasing their mine shells to float directly into the team’s path. Meteor was fast enough to cope, but with the added wrinkle of rising bombs and the harassment of the Sea Attackers, Madeline passed the turtlefield with a broken tentacle and a crack in her bell.</p>
<p>“Poor girl,” Jacques lamented, shooting a returning pair of evasive seahorses.</p>
<p>“Atajo, what’s your read on hostiles?”</p>
<p>“Humpback’s hugging the city-shaft, that much I can pin.” He made a teeth-sucking sound. “They had a <em>long</em> time to buy heavies… I’m reading a lot, trying to narrow to things inbound on you...”</p>
<p>“Madame!” Jacques pointed. “Ten o’clock low!”</p>
<p>She saw it. Huge, broad, blue, aesthetically a Hotareeca’s mother…</p>
<p>
  <em>Where in the heck did they even find a—</em>
</p>
<p>“<em>Kurageil!</em>” Atajo confirmed.</p>
<p>A bigger, meaner jellyfish rose from the depths, its head and “shoulders” armored in sleek blue. Kurageils were marine guardians hated by administration and enemy alike for all the same reasons as Hotareecas, and never to Meteor’s knowledge numbered more than ten in all the world. Humpback’s business with Tidal Whale paid dividends.</p>
<p>Meteor’s throat hummed.</p>
<p>“Jacques, drop the jelly, spread out and don’t stop firing!”</p>
<p>He engaged as Meteor produced a pair of Remote Koi and followed her own advice. The Kurageil opened its launcher and sprayed a fusillade of dark missiles, faster and bigger than Madeline’s.</p>
<p>The return fire was a punishment. Meteor tasked Madeline to get in the way and fire the works. Jacques’ regular shots joined the showa beams to smash into the guard jelly’s big blue bell. Its shields labored under the full-on abuse.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A pirate shell spawned six spinning Sea Attackers. Meteor sicced her koi on them even as the Kurageil whipped out its arms. The tentacle tips spun off, becoming whirling boomerang scythes to join the seahorses.</p>
<p>Madeline took a scythe to the bell as she – definitely a she, Meteor decided – pumped out missiles. The second scythe came for Meteor with half the Sea Attackers; two fell to her koi and the third to a quick slash of her Gaia Sword as her Melter warmed at max charge, still too far to breathe her deadly flame.</p>
<p>The scythes returned. The Kurageil opened its shoulders and readied its heaviest weapons. Orange energy gathered into tight bundles of spheres as another seahorse egg landed further afield. Meteor’s drones slammed into the cannons, but the charge kept charging.</p>
<p>“Jacques, prep evasion!”</p>
<p>Another two shells choose exactly that moment to sink and pop. <em>Eighteen </em>sea horses ignored Jacques and flew for Meteor.</p>
<p>The Kurageil trained its cannons on her. To stop and address the swarm would have left her wide open.</p>
<p>
  <em>She’s really trying to kill me.</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor turned to the converging swarm. It disappeared in the explosion of her Hinoiki as she gave Madeline an emergency order.</p>
<p>She heard the Kurageil fire.</p>
<p>Madeline body-blocked it.</p>
<p>Three tiny orange suns struck the allied jellyfish. Its shields strobed, its bell cracked, and one tentacle blew completely off, but it still tagged its evil superior jellyfish with two more missiles. The flash suggested the Kurageil’s shield battery was  near empty, but it still had its arms and cannons –</p>
<p>
  <em>Wait. There were two cannons.</em>
</p>
<p>The other shot went for Jacques. The distance gave him enough warning and absolutely saves his life, but six more Sea Attackers followed his movement and hit him like a swarm of bees. He fought them off, shooting and harpoon-stabbing, but there was only so much one could do against an aggressive mob beatdown. His shields flashed; the frame rate didn’t look good.</p>
<p>Meteor abandoned the Kurageil and ordered Madeline to cover her advance on the seahorse swarm. Buster fire and huge arcs of her Zanbato turned six to zero. Jacques’s armor was scored from high-speed bludgeoning impacts and his helmet crystal pulsed in and out, but he was still active.</p>
<p>A chain explosion alerted her to Madeline’s fate. The Kurageil motored through her death throes and fired its orange-particle cannons.</p>
<p>Meteor grabbed Jacques by the collar and jetted out of the line of fire. In a flash of angry spite he gripped his harpoon.</p>
<p>“<em>Décâlisser la yeule!</em>” He shouted, hurling the weapon with a magnetic launch system that shot it like a missile.</p>
<p>It sank in. There was no flash.</p>
<p>“Its shields quit!” She let Jacques go. “Stay put, I <em>got</em> this!”</p>
<p>The monster’s missile launcher started to open. She ignored it, shifted her hand to a Spark Hand-Drill and poured on the speed. Electricity snaked in her wake as she swung her grinding electrofist into the crater of its face and fired.</p>
<p>Sharp shearing squeals echoed through its hull. Buzzing electricity arced down its tentacles, jets, and launcher. Its LIFE cell ruptured through its seams, splitting it apart as it exploded. The guard dog was gone and the yard was wide open.</p>
<p>Jacques hung in the water nearby, holding a particularly deep scrape-dent.</p>
<p>“Oogh. Well done, madame. Pardon my French.”</p>
<p>She swam back over and held out her hand. “Stick with me, Jacques, I’ll find you somewhere safe to get rescued under the city-rig.”</p>
<p>He took her offered grip. “Sounds splendid…”</p>
<p>They swam with less than optimal aerodynamics.</p>
<p>The Free State’s overhang was built far over the edge of the original rig, likely with no regard to safety standards. There was a structural unevenness to it, a blocky asymmetry.</p>
<p>The Hunters swam up to a recessed section out of easy view. Meteor squeezed Jacques’ shoulder.</p>
<p>“All right. Standard retrieval protocol. Don’t move and keep your rescue beacon active. Somebody’ll pick you up. Might even be me if I’m fast enough,” she grinned.</p>
<p>Jacques saluted, grimacing when a spark jumped from his elbow. “Yes, Lieutenant. It’s been a pleasure – for a given value of pleasure, yes?”</p>
<p>She smiled to support his bravery and left him there.</p>
<p>“Estimated line of sight impending,” Atajo advised.</p>
<p>Meteor didn’t reply.</p>
<p>She saw her.</p>
<p>Sounding Humpback’s white- and storm-colored form filtered out of the abyssal blue of the sea. She was a humpback whale, life-sized but with humanoid arms, one of the largest reploids ever to exist – and certainly the largest mermaid.</p>
<p>“<em>Meteor</em>.”</p>
<p>That voice. That velvet earthquake. <em>Her</em> voice. The voice that long ago made Meteor realize she really had a thing for voices.</p>
<p>“Sound.”</p>
<p>The Maverick spoke in sonorous reverberation, her enormous prow of a mouth held shut.</p>
<p>“<em>Take your forces and leave us in peace</em>.”</p>
<p>“You know I can’t do that.”</p>
<p>“<em>Very well</em>.”</p>
<p>A curtain of hexagons fell from the platform above, an energy cascade forming a barrier all the way to the drilling rig’s foundation peak. The outer surface was slightly bowed out.</p>
<p>Sounding Humpback was sealed inside a fishbowl with the diameter of the city.</p>
<p>“Showa!” Sapphire shouted in her ear. “Tell me you’re inside that bubble!”</p>
<p>“Negative!”</p>
<p>“Dammit!”</p>
<p>“Atajo, what’s powering it?!”</p>
<p>“Got a clear ping on a reactor near the hub. Its output’s coughing but it’ll hold for— whoa whoa wait—”</p>
<p>Meteor’s old friend, her target, aligned her face with a part of the barrier. A patch of energy hexagons dropped out, opening a hole too far away for Meteor to swim to in time.</p>
<p>Sounding Humpback opened her mouth.</p>
<p>The water distorted in a hazy glassy line of cavitation running from the hole to the surface. Supersonic vibrations tightened to a thread and breached the water. Something floating above made the surface bow under its explosion as the barrier closed.</p>
<p>“She just took out one of our ships!” Sapphire yelled.</p>
<p>“One sec one sec one sec,” Atajo tamped down his panic, “and, there! The wave farm’s feeding the barrier! Just follow the cable pipe around east and take the, uh, four-o’clock road to the hub!”</p>
<p>“What, skirting the gun wall?!” Sapphire objected.</p>
<p>“She won’t get bogged down that way!” Atajo objected back. “It’s the shortest route not involving human apartments!”</p>
<p>“With the highest chance of collateral when-not-if they fire inward!”</p>
<p>“Are you more or less likely to lose more people by delays, Captain?!”</p>
<p>“We can hold, we know what to watch out for now! Showa!”</p>
<p>“Yeah?!” Meteor answered.</p>
<p>“Go west,” Sapphire advised. “Skirt the docks, most of the pirates are on their damn ships!”</p>
<p>“Captain,” Atajo countered, “with every atom of respect I’m the navigator—”</p>
<p>“—And I’m the heckin’ one who’ll decide!” Meteor finished on the move. “I’m taking the docks route! Keep an eye on Jacques for me!”</p>
<p>“Copy,” Atajo grudgingly accepted.</p>
<p>“Understood,” said Sapphire, “we’ll be okay.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor doubled back to the edge of the city-rig and jumped from the water between the wave farm and docks. To her right, the long motion-to-energy generators stretched out to sea and undulated like giant sausage links. To her left, the over-constructed docks were indeed mostly empty.</p>
<p>Mostly.</p>
<p>A docked Cruziller whaleship spotted her and started lobbing parachute grenades. She started running and let it bombard, on the logic that it wouldn’t very well get out and follow her.</p>
<p>Knot Berets blocked her path and lobbed their own grenades. Meteor’s charge shot deleted one of the grunts and a quick swing-swing of her Gaia Sword dismissed the other.</p>
<p>“We got a boarder!” Someone shouted up high, cueing her to start charging her Melter. She caught a glimpse of a Steel Beret signal-waving a flag. A red flare whistles up from another roof.</p>
<p>Two Standard Beret pirates – for surely they must been pirates, with their tricorn hats and beam cutlasses – waited alongside an ordinary green Victoroid. The mechaniloid had a flagpole strapped to its back at an angle, showing off roses and thorns on a field of black.</p>
<p>“Wotcher, Hunter!” One pirate yelled, tossing a bomb.</p>
<p>She dashed under it. Taken by surprise, the pirates raised their blades.</p>
<p>Meteor made it quick. She opened her mouth and filled their worlds with devouring flame, switched to Frost Bomb and splashed them with fatal thermal shock.</p>
<p>The Victoroid’s powerful cannon was an easy dodge. She timed her approach like a pro and give it the same shock in reverse: her Zanbato’s first swing made a shiny statue of it and the second swing carved deep, slicing it in two.</p>
<p>
  <em>Can’t stop. Have to stop her—</em>
</p>
<p>Humpback fired again. Meteor felt the reverberation under her feet. A distant explosion dropped the other shoe.</p>
<p>“We’re still in good shape!” Sapphire commed. “Keep at it!”</p>
<p>Meteor made good use of her Chaser Dash, but more Knot Berets ran out from narrow alleys between the increasingly taller and more ramshackle streetside buildings. She sprinted and sprang and kicked off a wall, jumping clear over them with dreamlike agility. Her old specs, <em>last month’s</em> old specs, would never have made such maneuverability possible. Hers was by that point a whole different body, practically flying, no longer racing to catch up to her old standard but to end her greatest mistake.</p>
<p>
  <em>I have to stop her.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I have a responsibility.</em>
</p>
<p>She faced another roadblock, a sheer barricade of sheer junk dotted with Mettaurs. They were nothing, positively <em>nothing</em> to her Hinoiki, but it cost more precious seconds to clamber over the scrap.</p>
<p>Finally, two relics from years ago turned the corner ahead of her: old Road Attacker battlecars fitted with much more modern cannons.</p>
<p>The drivers were human, wild-haired and dark-leathered.</p>
<p>She aimed carefully, one Arbor Wall to each front cannon. One seed hit, popped open and crushes the cannon and entire hood, spinning the vehicle out. The other missed, landing just short and growing into a wall which absorbed the crash of the second car.</p>
<p>She marched forward, hoping to look ominous. “Whether or not you’re injured, stay down and let me pass!”</p>
<p>The spun-out driver pulled a buster rifle from behind his seat.</p>
<p>Meteor shot the tip off.</p>
<p>“One side, <em>please</em>,” she advised.</p>
<p>The local human reached in his jacket and threw what looks like a soda can. It popped in flight, fizzling Meteor’s vision into jumpy monochrome static.</p>
<p>That freaking idiot—</p>
<p>She jumped to one side and ran ahead, blind from richter-scale swaying static, before he could follow up. She heard the buzz of a beam knife.</p>
<p>Her ability to discern shapes returned just in time to see the second human driver stand on his seat and throw some sort of ball.</p>
<p>She raised her left arm and engaged the Repulsor Wing. The ball hit the shield and snapped apart, beaming plasma knife blades from its equator.</p>
<p>The static-blurred shape of the first human charged her, knife out.</p>
<p>Meteor vaulted her Arbor Wall and leaped off, sailing clear over the crashed human. He grunted another throw, but up came the shield, swatting the ball away. The tumbling spin of its beam blade left afterimages in Meteor’s sight that lingered even as she dashed away from the crash site.</p>
<p>
  <em>They’re armed for anti-reploid combat. Maybe they’re not all stupid…</em>
</p>
<p>Her buster built charge as the static started to clear. She could discern yellows again. The structure ahead rises higher than the hastily-built “skyline” and looked less built-over, probably part of the original rig.</p>
<p>“Atajo, how close?”</p>
<p>“Inside, upstairs.”</p>
<p>Another vibration. Another explosion.</p>
<p>“We’re fine, we’re fine!” Sapphire promises, a little too strongly.</p>
<p>“Atajo,” Meteor stressed, knocking the space between her eyes with the heel of her palm, “give me a you. What’s the fastest way up?!”</p>
<p>“Climb the outside and break in, natch. But everybody in the area will have a sight line on you.”</p>
<p>Two Remote Koi swam from her buster. “Then try to give me a heads-up.”</p>
<p>“Will do.”</p>
<p>Wall-climbing with typical flat reploid feet was harder than it looked. It was all about angling one’s ankles just so and throwing oneself into the surface over and over, really hard, as much as it was about upper body strength.</p>
<p>“Hostiles!” Atajo warned, but the fish drones were already on the attack. Two Helits flying in went down without a hitch. A Wall Cancer scuttled above, but her the lasered it down too, and up Meteor went.</p>
<p>“Jacques is holding steady,” Atajo updated. “I’ve got his help-me spot pinned, don’t worry<em>craplookout!</em>”</p>
<p>Meteor hurled herself higher, just ahead of an explosive impact below her. She hung in place off a convenient pipe and bent around to see humans on neighboring rooftops yelling into blocky radios. A pirate yacht out in the water was pointed her way.</p>
<p>More immediate to her concern, someone in the human spotter team picked up a bazooka.</p>
<p><em>Come on, Tancho</em>…</p>
<p>[Target Lock], her HUD informed. One of her koi flew in and took a rocket-propelled grenade for her, exploding in heroism from Armor Tancho’s spliced-in WEAPON data.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Two more rockets hiss-whistled into the path of her climb. Her valiant remaining koi took one and she batted the other with the Repulsor Wing.</p>
<p>“Ship fire!” Yelled Atajo.</p>
<p>Meteor clung to a window ledge. The cannon shell had better aim that time. Meteor tucked her tail in and braced with the shield.</p>
<p>The shell struck square. The wing shattered. The wall began to crumble. Meteor climbed a few more meters and found herself outside a top window shaped like a big nautical porthole.</p>
<p>
  <em>No time for finesse.</em>
</p>
<p>She vomited thermite and bashed her way in.</p>
<p>On the other side lay an empty hallway. She followed a sign reading “Power Access.”</p>
<p>“You’re on the right track,” said Atajo, “but you’re not gonna like this.”</p>
<p>“Hit me, buddy.”</p>
<p>“Reploid signal. Somebody’s waiting. Be ready.”</p>
<p>“I swear,” she grumbled, “if it’s not one thing today it’s another…”</p>
<p>A security wall retracted at her approach. The interior room was… not what she expected.</p>
<p>Hardwood. Porthole-style monitors. Rugs. A desk, a bed, an open hatch with a ladder going down. A wall segment full of dials and little trumpets leading into the floor… and a woman standing before a porthole screen, twisting a tiny bowswain’s wheel to flip between camera angles on the sea battles going on outside.</p>
<p>The reploid seemed aquatic-themed with her long blonde hair, fish-fin earcaps, and samurai shoulder guards topping bikini armor. If not for the high-heel construction of her feet, she would’ve easily passed for a human in a costume; her hands were tiny, her armor had attachment seams, and even her kneeboots were human-proportion slender. Meteor didn’t even want to guess the price of that much endoconstruction work.</p>
<p>“You’re late, Maverick Hunter,” she remarked.</p>
<p>“Identify yourself.”</p>
<p>“Late and stupid, then.” The woman faced Meteor without enthusiasm; Meteor blinked in surprise. Her neck went all the way down, artificial muscles moved under artificial skin, and for crying out loud she even had collarbones! “I’m the greatest treasure-hunter in the world, the Doyenne of the Salty Roses. Call me Marty.”</p>
<p>“Marty? You’re in charge of the pirates?”</p>
<p>“S’right, the big boss, whoopty-doo,” Marty spun her finger, “but look where it got me.” She thumbed back at the monitor. “All those lost souls out there with more bravery than sense? Repliforce turned them on me. Men I’ve known for years – every last one.” She shook her head. “They went and let themselves get radicalized.”</p>
<p>Meteor kept her guard up as the mortal seconds ticked on. “Speak quickly. Why’d you come here and help a Maverick if you weren’t already radicals?”</p>
<p>“<em>Money, honey</em>.” Marty made OK signs with both hands. “Loot. Dosh. <em>O-KA-NE</em>. Humpback knew every untapped shipwreck and mineral vein from Larsen to Reykjavik! You’d have to be insane to pass up that payday!” She heaved a sigh and rested her hand on her shapely hip. “Then Repliforce came in and suddenly treasure wasn’t enough. I could deal with a mutiny, but not the loss of hearts and minds. All the booty in the world wasn’t worth this. Damn that whale. What a mess…”</p>
<p>Magma bubbled in Meteor’s heart. She had no time for this.</p>
<p>But fighting would’ve been the easy solution. <em>So easy, being selfish</em>…</p>
<p>Meteor lowered her buster. “I’m here to retire Humpback, not you or your crew. I just need to get that fishbowl shield down.”</p>
<p>“If you’d have come earlier,” Marty ranted on, evidently not caring, “if you were a better class of Hunter like X is, you’d just blaze right in, me and my crew would give you a tussle, and then you’d take her down and we’d go back to honest treasure-hunting again. But now my easy out is sunk. So the way I see it, big fish…?”</p>
<p>Marty whipped her arm out. A trident hilt telescoped into being and lit up three hibeam tines. She twirled it in her deft fingers and levels it at Meteor.</p>
<p>“This is all your fault.”</p>
<p>Meteor’s mental magma chamber bubbled.</p>
<p>
  <em>I’m within rights to retire her.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Humpback’s killing people and I’m wasting time talking.</em>
</p>
<p>Somewhere in the crystal synapses of her brain, Deco’s voice poured ice on it.</p>
<p>
  <em>Nothing we do is ever wasted on the ones who have the most to gain from it.</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor stared down Marty’s hostile stance and formed her hand out of her buster.</p>
<p>“Marty. You called yourself a treasure-hunter before you ever said the word ‘pirate.’ Do you know what that says to me?”</p>
<p>She looked down her trident, waiting. The tines sizzled the air.</p>
<p>“It says <em>freedom</em>. I bet you and your men came here to live free from anybody telling you what to do. Anybody trying to edge in on your claims. The seas belong to nobody, so they belong to anybody, right? And that goes for all things left behind in it. Finder’s keepers. Or so I bet.”</p>
<p>Marty hadn’t stabbed her yet. She took that as a positive.</p>
<p>“You don’t plunder for politics,” Meteor continued. “You don’t conquer, you don’t ransack. And you thought Humpback was the same. She took her crew and left to enjoy that freedom – and aside from the treasure sites she knew, that’s really what won you over. You respected her for her choice. For the bravery it took to do that in the face of the world. Right?”</p>
<p>Marty’s trident dipped fractionally lower. “Little.”</p>
<p>“Meteor she fired again!” Atajo alerted.</p>
<p>“Lieutenant we could really use that field down!” Sapphire sounded rushed.</p>
<p>Meteor opened her audio feed to their comms and drew on every gram of her acting ability.</p>
<p>“Listen to me, Marty. Humpback doesn’t have the love of liberty you thought she did. Even now she’s acting like a bad Hunter – putting faction ahead of freedom, not caring who’s caught in the middle. You don’t need to protect her.”</p>
<p>“I’m not,” Marty stiffened her grip and jerked her weapon closer to the space between Meteor’s eyes.</p>
<p>Meteor ever so carefully reached out her harmless open hands. “Then please. Help me. I’m sorry I didn’t come fast enough to save your men from her. If you join me for five minutes and help me fight her, if your men see you help take her down, they’ll see where freedom really lies. And then you and I can have all the time in the world to duke it out. Okay?”</p>
<p>A tempest of emotions played across Marty’s wonderfully articulated face. Meteor thought she saw something rare in her expression: age, and the balance of wisdom.</p>
<p>Whatever was going on behind her eyes, Marty swept her trident to the hatch.</p>
<p>“Get the hell down there. There’s access to the shaft too, and out to the water. Go get yourself killed and spare me the trouble.”</p>
<p>Meteor bowed first; it was only polite. “Thank you.”</p>
<p>“Go.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor jumped down the hatch, because who ever had time for ladders?</p>
<p>It led to a control room right out of a power plant. Meteor took a second to orient herself.</p>
<p><em>The generators are all around in the hub structure, okay, so the power comes in from here and goes out from there</em>…</p>
<p>The power draw for the barrier was immense. It was easy to find where it was being routed. Meteor was no tech expert, but she knew how to enter a system and flip a switch.</p>
<p>User passwords and privileges didn’t even try to stop her. The system seemed to recognize her as an active user by name of “MARTINI 4X.”</p>
<p>The barrier shut down. Capacitor feeds flashed bright. The screen prompted to allow access from another user, one “SOUNDOFMUSIC.”</p>
<p>Meteor hit Deny.</p>
<p>“Sapphire, shield’s down, how’re you holding up?”</p>
<p>“Barely,” she sounded relieved. “We’re pulling out to minimum safe distance. You’re on your own.”</p>
<p>“Pirate vessels in pursuit,” advised Atajo, “I don’t think they’ll bug you.”</p>
<p>Another hatch lay across the room. Meteor opened it.</p>
<p>It went further than she expected. The ladder vanished out of sight into a darkness punctuated by occasional ineffective LED lamps.</p>
<p>She slid down for a few seconds, grip loose on the bars until she came to a well-lit security hatch to one side. She hopped off and it opened for her, into a claustrophobic airlock.</p>
<p>Like any navigator, Atajo stated the obvious. “High energy signal outside. You know who it is.”</p>
<p>Meteor stepped in. The door snapped shut and the tiny space slowly filled with water.</p>
<p>“Atajo?”</p>
<p>“Yeah?”</p>
<p>“If I can’t do this…”</p>
<p>“You can and will.”</p>
<p>The water rose over Meteor’s elbows. She closed her eyes.</p>
<p>“Just in case, I wanted to tell you something.”</p>
<p>“C’mon, Lieutenant,” he lightened her heart with his amicably chiding tone, “don’t get so final on me. We’ve got years to go before we sleep.”</p>
<p>The water rose over face. “Thank you, Atajo. Gracias por ser mi navegante.”</p>
<p>“You’re welcome, Meteor. Buena caza.”</p>
<p>The water hit the ceiling. The pressure equalized.</p>
<p>The final door slid wide.</p>
<p>Meteor opened her eyes.</p>
<p>The Maverick was waiting, eyeing her in profile just out of easy buster range.</p>
<p>“<em>Time enough for banter, old friend?</em>” Humpback chuckled without moving her enormous mouth.</p>
<p>Meteor swam out a ways. “You could always surrender.”</p>
<p>“<em>No. I have a responsibility to the expendable. Ex-Repliforce, ex-Maverick, human vagabonds</em>,” she rolled her giant wrist. “<em>I took no pleasure in abandoning my post, but this is the only way that they – that we – will be safe</em>.”</p>
<p>“I kept you safe,” Meteor palmed her chest. “This is the thanks I get?!”</p>
<p>“<em>You couldn’t succeed forever. I was a liability</em>.”</p>
<p>“No you weren’t! Even somebody like me can still retire you!”</p>
<p>Humpback swam a slow shrinking orbit of the city-state’s invincible shaft, her profile long and ominous. Meteor swam around to keep her in sight.</p>
<p>“<em>You misunderstand. With the right upgrades, this body of mine could become Class G with ease. I knew the Hunters couldn’t risk that after the war. So the moment it ended, I protected myself… and all those who through no fault of their own were suddenly without value</em>.”</p>
<p>“Protected?! You’ve endangered thousands of humans! You harbor pirates and support murderers and terrorists! You’re not a savior, Sounding Humpback, you’re a Maverick!”</p>
<p>“<em>Only future generations can decide whether we are truly Maverick or not</em>.”</p>
<p>Meteor charged her buster with finality.</p>
<p>“You shouldn’t focus on the future so hard. Otherwise you might not see it at all… and the things you love, the things you’re responsible for, will wither for lack of you. Future generations aren’t here, Humpback. But I am. Right now. And damn it, I’m a Maverick Hunter.”</p>
<p>Humpback turned with leviathan grace and widened her mouth.</p>
<p>“<em>Then come. Take responsibility!</em>”</p>
<p>Memories flooded in. Meteor had never sparred with her, but knew her standard armament from experience. The narrow Shock Lance was, well, narrow, and Meteor was far away, which meant Humpback would open with <em>width</em>.</p>
<p>Meteor flew out on maximum dash, tail and boots both, and let the noise come. The colossal thrum of Chorus Cannon was like a tombstone hitting the bottom of a pool. She let her plasma blast fly and deployed her koi.</p>
<p>Humpback didn’t even try to dodge. Her ponderous bulk always kept the glass ceiling of her Rank anchored firmly at A. The shot hit and rippled a single blink of first-generation shield-battery energy over her body, tip to tip. She followed Meteor with her left eye and hand in profile. The whole world would be in trouble if she found a buster her size, but thankfully she simply fired another stock weapon: a barrage of cylindrical depth charges, Depth Notes, that looked a little like whales. She shot high to let them drop once their self-propulsion ran out.</p>
<p>Meteor didn’t understand her tactics. The koi finally reached her and started lasering, tiny beams picking a random point on her body and focusing to cut in tandem, but she paid them no mind. The Depth Notes sank toward Meteor; they wouldn’t be in trouble range for a moment, and when they arrived they were surely nothing she couldn’t dodge. If Humpback didn’t have any new tricks, the fight was already over.</p>
<p>
  <em>She has to know that. What is this, suicide-by-Hunter?</em>
</p>
<p>Humpback tucked her arm to her side.</p>
<p>“<em>Farewell</em>.”</p>
<p>Her skin hummed. Vibrations tightened until her whole body was wreathed in shimmer. The drones kept firing, but their lasers disappeared within the shimmer layer.</p>
<p>Humpback pivoted in the water like she was a tenth of her size, opened her mouth and inhaled.</p>
<p>The draw force was incredible, like an Anglerge on circuit boosters. Meteor was sucked in – and so were the depth charges.</p>
<p>Her dash let her fight against the drag, but not enough to stall completely. In seconds she was a salmon darting through a gauntlet of bears. The charges were set on proximity, as she learned when the concussive bang hammered her hull. One finally went off too close, flaring her shields as well as her ears. And still the suction went on against her efforts to escape, pulling her precipitously closer.</p>
<p>Meteor fed Humpback her koi. The shiny sparkly mini-showas slipped into her mouth and burst hot. The suction freed her; Humpback’s shields blinked almost languidly as she dived, venting a massive cloud of bubbles. Meteor knew it instantly as Bubble Net, a cascade of hydromer compound to clean the seas of offensive metals. Such as reploid bodies.</p>
<p>Humpback blew a certain volume of the Net at a time as she moved, making them come at Meteor in thick vertical-oriented diagonals. Staying clear of the killer foam patterns required clever movement, which Meteor had in spades.</p>
<p>Following the patterns also meant that Humpback herded her where she wanted.</p>
<p>The whale rose fast, too fast, her outline blurred.</p>
<p>Meteor darted on a perpendicular path. Humpback launches straight past her, too massive to change course even with a full-body torpedo sheath, but such a turn of speed on such a huge body was still frightening. She cut off the shield, stopped herself before colliding with the city’s underbelly and dived at normal velocity, dropping Depth Notes ahead of her.</p>
<p>Meteor had enough of evasion. She fired an Arbor Wall.</p>
<p>The plank shot up and set off a chain of Notes before denting Humpback in the ample jaw and spinning up out of sight.</p>
<p>Her mouth opened and blasted Meteor with thunderous force, but she broke out of the path before taking the full hit. The arc of her path maintained middle distance as Humpback dived again. Meteor pursued, still on Arbor Wall, and locked in on her blowhole. She rolled over to thwart the aim and spewed more depth charges; Meteor fired anyway, the Wall formed, and the shockwave from three detonated Notes hurled it back at her.</p>
<p>Meteor caught it on a corner, held tight and dragged it behind her while charging her Melter. Humpback sprayed the first long shot of her Bubble Net pattern. Meteor held the plank dead-center and let it run interference as she dashed straight through the foam.</p>
<p>The cyberwood disintegrated through the bubbles and broke at the last. Meteor arrived at the blowhole in the foam’s cooldown cycle.</p>
<p>She fired another seed, practically point-blank. It was smaller than the WEAPON projector aperture, but its own rapid growth snagged it inside. As roots cracked pavement over years, the Arbor Wall cracked her nostril in all of a second. Humpback’s shields flashed – and hummed.</p>
<p>“<em>Elk’s?! How dare you!</em>”</p>
<p>She rolled over, fast as a turbine. A fist the size of Meteor’s entire body swung around and delivered a haymaker to shame Volt. Meteor tumbled away from the force, shields raving.</p>
<p>Humpback’s maw yawned wide. “<em>I will scour the sea of all who threaten us!</em>”</p>
<p>Meteor blazed for the city’s underbelly, chased by the cavitation beam of Shock Lance. The beam cut off so as not to accidentally hit anything of value.</p>
<p>Enraged, the Maverick blurred in her bubble sheath and swam at ramming speed.</p>
<p>Her size proved a liability again as Meteor dashed to parallel her, cross her wake and make for the city’s column. Humpback reoriented herself and blasted Chorus Cannon.</p>
<p>The force of sonic compression slammed Meteor’s tail as she ducked out of sight around the foundation pillar. Humpback circles it above in a fast orbit and started dropping her charges, around and around in randomly patterned diagonals like a Bubble Net in reverse.</p>
<p>Meteor cleared a path with another fast-rising Arbor Wall and shot the gap, cutting into Humpback’s orbit as she passed. She shot Frost Bomb twice for six bombs before diving down out of the way. Humpback blundered into the floating stickies. Her speedbubble quits. Meteor hit the trigger—</p>
<p>In that same instant Humpback thrummed like a cello slamming a gong. The bombs floated off even as they exploded and splashed her hide, blinking her again. She grabbed the shaft wall, pivoted herself face-down and blared a chorus.</p>
<p>Meteor’s seams rattled under her shield flash.</p>
<p>
  <em>All right, so she’s lost some weight too…</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor orbited the shaft out of Humpback’s line of sight and swam for height, intending to backstab.</p>
<p>Humpback roared around the bend inside her speedbubble and rammed Meteor full in the side with her knobby whale chin.</p>
<p>Meteor went for a ride, formed a sparking drillfist and drove it into her lip.</p>
<p>It went straight in like a piercing gun, drilling through her ancient first-generation lightweight Titanium-X hide.</p>
<p>Her shield battery strobed her like a rave. Meteor fired the drills, but they careened off her flashing. Humpback thrashed her head to hurl Meteor out into middle range, where she escaped to a lower depth.</p>
<p>“<em>They do not need a Hunter!</em>” Humpback’s bubble boost hummed back up. “<em>They need a MOTHER! They need ME!</em>”</p>
<p>She flew upward. Meteor had seen enough of her bubble to understand its limits: a minimum duration, a middling refresh rate, a sacrifice of directional agility, and most importantly, interruptible.</p>
<p>Meteor dived deep, spent an Arbor Wall and dragged it behind her once more.</p>
<p>Humpback dived faster still.</p>
<p>The plank shot toward her. A corner of her massive mouth smirked at the repeated no-damage trick; surely the Hunter had expected Depth Notes again instead of a killing ram.</p>
<p>She saw too late that the new plank was studded with Frost Bombs.</p>
<p>Speed met speed. Meteor triggered her payload on impact. Negative-temperature chemistry – and, instantly, ice – covered the tip of Sounding Humpback’s mouth. She thrashed ineffectually, not blinded but muzzled.</p>
<p>Meteor launched to meet her, Hand-Drill spinning.</p>
<p>Humpback pointed her arms and fired her whale-shaped bombs too late. Meteor fired twice, her drills and their lightning chewing through the barrage.</p>
<p>She rose past Humpback’s eye.</p>
<p>They shared a look.</p>
<p>Meteor swam the length of her body, firing again and again. Each drill bit and burrowed, sparking under the Maverick’s skin. Lightning surged over her hull as Meteor planted her back to the city’s pillar.</p>
<p>Humpback triggered her bubble, wrenched herself around and torpedoed herself at Meteor in a drilling spin, a dancer’s spiral spawning sonic explosives in her wake.</p>
<p><em>She’d really collide and take the city with me. She doesn’t care anymore</em>.</p>
<p>Meteor drew her sabers, Gaia Sword in her left and Zanbato in her right.</p>
<p>
  <em>Just like any Maverick.</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor honored her old friend with a mirror of her dance. She flew at the whale in a spin, arms out, carving the length of her body over and over, striping deep rents through the bubble and into her back.</p>
<p>The sheathing force burst. Sounding Humpback crashed into her city’s support column only self-injuriously, crumpling her much-abused face and twisting her body sideways as her own Depth Notes played a cacophonous dirge around her.</p>
<p>Finally, finally, her core gave off its death flash.</p>
<p>“<em>Take care… of them…</em>”</p>
<p>Beams of light streaked from cracks in her hide. Her fatal explosion went on for what felt like years. History in the shape of a friend vanished in a fusion core fail-safe.</p>
<p>“Retirement confirmed,” Atajo announced in her ear. “Sapphire got out safe, but one more hit and—”</p>
<p>“Atajo.”</p>
<p>“Yes?”</p>
<p>“Please. I need a minute.”</p>
<p>For once, silence was his reply.</p>
<p>Meteor hung in the water and followed the smallest pieces of Humpback’s wreckage down to the sea floor. It settled into the silt, bit by bit.</p>
<p>Meteor sat and hugged her knees.</p>
<p>She envied Skittle. She envied X.</p>
<p>She wanted so much to be able to cry.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:<br/>“Rare Earth”</p>
<p>Rare Earth was a Maverick cell, one of many that coalesced from the remnants of the Doppler War. Their modus operandi was theft, smuggling, and embezzling of materials harvested from the Mining Worlds for the purposes of financing and supplying other Maverick cells. Their leadership was a triad of former geochemists: Adamant, Mithril, and Orichalcum.</p>
<p>Maverick Hunter Headquarters Central America was the first to identify their base of operations hidden in the East Pacific Rise west of Peru. To put an end to them, the Veracruz 6th Marine Armada led a multi-base, multi-unit effort. The officers they fielded were Vent Plasmanta, Laser Focalizar, Sounding Humpback, and a recently transferred newcomer from 12th Tropical, Meteor Showa.</p>
<p>Magnet Moray of the Tokyo 6th betrayed the team, letting Adamant launch a surprise attack on the Easter Island rallying point. The attack cut off most of the planned support and felled many Hunters before Plasmanta could retire Adamant. Despite that setback, the combined forces struck deep into the massive stronghold, fighting through a legion of reploids and mechaniloids augmented by refined space metals.</p>
<p>As Mithril and Moray battled the main force, Laser Focalizar and Meteor Showa pursued Orichalcum and cornered her at the base’s geothermal plant. The two A-Ranks successfully brought down the S-Class Maverick in a hard-won battle, preventing a volcanic eruption that would have claimed the lives of every Hunter present.</p>
<p>Meteor Showa was duly commended for her service. One week later she was reassigned to the Veracruz 4th to replace Marvel Calavera, a recently discharged officer with a similar heat-type WEAPON system.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Closing Time</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>After the trials of her roster, Meteor joins her friends for one more night out -- when she makes a realization. The next morning, Meteor is dispatched for one will supposedly be a simple mission.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Eighth Hour rumbled with conversation and passing underground trucks. There was some controversy on a screen; one of China’s basketball stars was being stripped of his Olympic gold medals for having hidden sophisticated cybernetic augmentation. There was a whole other Olympics for guys like him, but still he cheated to win the baseline one. Meteor tried hard to care.</p>
<p>Alone in her booth, she finally took a sip of the screaming pink daiquiri condensing in front of her. She hadn’t gotten around to her upgrades yet. Maybe later, when she would surely feel any degree of better.</p>
<p>Humpback’s demise opened up the venue for Sixth to commit at once to a blockade. She had stayed among Humpback’s wreckage long enough for remembrance, retreated to Jacques and kept him safe until a squad of top-flight Larimars escorted them out. The pirates were still shelling by the time she returned to a platform ship and ported out.</p>
<p>Attended to in the medbay, she thought of the radicalized reploids and humans too attached to the community they’d made, fighting for the sake of defiance. There in the bar, she thought of their would-be mother, one of Earth’s oldest and largest reploids, reduced to a broken shipwreck and a stolen fragment of armor sitting among the relics on Meteor’s shelf.</p>
<p>She took another sip and tried to will the nanite infusion into working harder.</p>
<p>“<em>There</em> you are!” Deco greeted over the sports-bar noise. “I’ve been looking all over!”</p>
<p>“Could’ve tried messaging,” she muttered.</p>
<p>“I did,” Deco slid into the seat opposite her, “but you set everything to datapad-only.”</p>
<p>“I did?” She checked. She did. “Oh. Sorry.”</p>
<p>“Well the short version is I couldn’t send any of my guys to get an assessment ‘cause it’s still an active site, but I’m sure you did the best you could. Wanna talk about it?”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>Deco gasped a little gasp. “Oh no, it’s worse than I thought.”</p>
<p>“Ugh, sorry, it’s just,” Meteor propped her wide face on her hands, “I didn’t go into this line of work to kill living treasures. Bad guys, sure. Maniacs, absolutely. But Humpback was… special. She made a bad choice for good reasons and just… stuck with it long enough that there was no going back.” She sigh. “And it’s all my fault that she stayed active long enough to turn.”</p>
<p>Her friend stole a sip of her drink. “I had one exactly like that.”</p>
<p>“Somehow I doubt it’s exact, Deco.” Meteor sank to the table and scooted her the glass.</p>
<p>“Near enough, then.” She traced the rim of the glass. “Impact Satellaika. Nice old cosmonaut, used to be a big wheel on Luna. She was a consultant on Nouveau’s weapon system, so I saw her around the home lab a lot. We had fun.”</p>
<p>Meteor watched a bead of condensation sprint to the bottom of the glass. “You liked her?”</p>
<p>“One-sidedly.” Deco affected a Russian accent, “She good dog, alvays good for talk. You vant advice? She give advice. Satellaika give advice like asteroid to head, boom.” She chuckled at herself, sliding back down to solemnity, “And then one day she fell in with the radical pro-Repliforce humans who dirty-bombed part of Lima.”</p>
<p>“She was protecting them too?”</p>
<p>“Yeeeup. They needed her, she said, ‘cause they were a hunted minority. We hadn’t spoken in years, but maybe, y’know, if I’d made the effort, reached out to her before then, never let her feel alone...” Deco stole another long sip, and in the pause Meteor heard the unspoken hint of concern for her. “I named one of my cactuses after her. Still carry her stock weapon, too. As a reminder. It’s all I can do for her now – remembering her well, and learning from her.”</p>
<p>Meteor sat up and took her drink back before Deco drained it all. “To bad choices of crush,” she toasted.</p>
<p>“As if crushes ever made sense,” she smirked and clinked her knuckle to the glass.</p>
<p>Meteor flapped out her datapad.</p>
<p>“Luddite,” Deco teased.</p>
<p>“Am not.”</p>
<p>“Fine. I’m sure you’d get a nice Lalinde model for free if you were sweet on our Requisitions officer,” she teased harder.</p>
<p>“Hush.” Meteor read.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>MISSION</p>
<p>C O M P L E T E</p>
<p> </p>
<p>- A-Rank Mission Parameters Complete: 35,000z</p>
<p>- Pirate Cell Neutralization: 5,000z</p>
<p>- Repliforce Cell Neutralization: 5,000z</p>
<p>- Gratuity, 6<sup>th</sup> Marine Armada: 5,000z</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TOTAL: 45,000z</p>
<p>ACCOUNT: 60,000z</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>[@LaserFocus6th]</p>
<p>Lieutenant Showa. … Meteor. Good work. Sorry I yelled at you the other day. You always did right by us, minus that unfortunate decision. But now Humpback’s gone. Cangrejo can rest easy. You’re welcome back to the Depth Charge whenever you like. … Nouveau is too. In case, y’know, you ever wanted to tell him.</p>
<p>[@Decorative]</p>
<p>Mimi! Hey! Congratulations on polishing off your roster, you’re the first one done for this period! <em>Again</em>. If you don’t mind waiting up for the rest of us slackers, maybe we could do something later?</p>
<p>[@MaximumIron]</p>
<p>Glad that mothballed jellyfish came in handy. No worries about breaking it, better to use than not. So hey, I noticed you charged some of my reshots – ever hear of this guy named Rock Dingo? He does amazing work with a synthesizer, almost better than Drywater Euphoryptus. I’ll post some links later.</p>
<p>[@fishwright]</p>
<p>GOOD JOB HUNTING THAT WHALE, LITTLE SISTER!!!</p>
<p>THANK YOU SO MUCH, MAYBE NOW MY SHIP CAN REST IN PEACE …</p>
<p>I’M WORKING ON ANOTHER FREIGHTER NOW, I’LL NAME HER THE METEOR SHOWA JUST FOR YOU :) !!!</p>
<p>WE’RE ALL SO PROUD OF YOU BACK HOME, PLEASE TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF :)</p>
<p>[@snowflurry21XX]</p>
<p>Hey you. Just got a box of bread-scented candles courtesy of your VeraZon account. Thanks, bud. You’re all right.</p>
<p>[@soundofthunder]</p>
<p>Still three on my roster. Beat me again. Good work. Bar later?</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>&gt; HALCYON RESIGNS</p>
<p>Maverick Hunter Commander Halcyon has resigned his office effective immediately, at the urging of CainLabs, the WRA, and a growing number of unit commanders at bases around the world. His infamously disastrous platforming of Major Primus is rumored to have been the proverbial final straw, but his administration had been plagued by poor decisions ever since Repliforce’s secession . . .</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor’s jaw fell open.</p>
<p>Deco read her face well. “Halcyon, right? Leave it to the Hour to not cut into sports for it.”</p>
<p>“I never thought he’d do it without a gun to his head.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, Turtle’s on cloud nine, but Nouveau’s been sour about it. Volt’s taking it well. No idea about Skittle. Me, I’m glad he’s out.”</p>
<p>Meteor kept scrolling. “Any idea who’ll replace him?”</p>
<p>“Nope, but I hear the Americans are pushing hard to get one of theirs installed.”</p>
<p>“When <em>don’t</em> they?”</p>
<p>The friends shared a friendly chuckle.</p>
<p>“So anyway,” Deco shifted gears, “I came here for you. First officer done with their roster means a party in their honor!”</p>
<p>“Since when?”</p>
<p>“Since right now,” she beamed. “You’re gonna have a good time tonight, Meteor Showa, my treat, and you’ve got no say in the matter!”</p>
<p>
  <em>Typical Deco.</em>
</p>
<p>“Just us?”</p>
<p>Deco’s gaze shyly flitted away. “Well, I mean, parties are more fun with more people, but, gosh…”</p>
<p>Meteor straightened up. “Y’know, you’re right. I’m gonna see if I can make it a real party. Yeah! I’ll get everyone on board!”</p>
<p>“Everyone?” Deco spread her fingers to half-cover her mouth. “I mean I can afford it, but we all have such different schedules now!”</p>
<p>“Doesn’t matter!” A sudden buzz of enthusiastic defiance suggested her drink was taking effect; to make sure, she slammed it back and spat out the crumpled little umbrella. “We’re all friends, aren’t we? If the need is great, we’ll come together like Hunters do!”</p>
<p>Deco’s grin threatened to knock her hat off. “That’s the spirit!”</p>
<p>At that very moment, Volt walked in and heads to the bar. Meteor jumped up and waved both arms at him.</p>
<p>“Volt! Volt! Over here! You want to party with us?!”</p>
<p>He stopped short. Seems to think.</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“One down!” She pumped her fist and slammed her earcap. “Meteor Showa to Fifth Communications!”</p>
<p>“Yeeeou have reached the station of your favorite shortcutter,” Atajo replied. “What’s up? I thought you were all done.”</p>
<p>“Not yet I’m not! Can you come down to – Deco, quick, where? Where?!”</p>
<p>“Anywhere you like!”</p>
<p>“To wherever I pick! We’re going to have some fun!”</p>
<p>Atajo’s comm line hissed with a wincing inward breath sound. “Ah, sorry, not tonight, I’m on shift for another eleven hours. And I’m kind of navigating three different B-Ranks right now. The guys need me, one already fell in a pit and – hell, this one’s being swarmed by bats. I’m breaking contact. Later.”</p>
<p>“Frig.”</p>
<p>“No luck?” Deco asked. Volt arrives with a stemless glass of probably-wine.</p>
<p>“Going down the list,” she motioned for Volt to sit. “Hey Flurry, think you can pull away from what you’re doing for a couple hours? I’m building a party.”</p>
<p>“Sorry, Lieutenant,” Flurry’s friendly gruffness filled her ear, “I’ve got a party of my own. Thompson and his girlfriend invited me to a chick flick with Torno. I think he thinks this means we’re dating.”</p>
<p>“No sweat. Tell me how it goes!” Meteor dropped one hand and raised the other, swapping earcaps and comm channels with military precision. “Hey Skittle, you busy?”</p>
<p>“<em>This is the comm line of Their Highness Scatter Seelie. If you’re dying, make it dramatic</em>.”</p>
<p>“Heck! Golau, hello, can you come to a party?”</p>
<p>“<em>This is the comm line of the dear sibling of Their Highness Scatter Seelie. Don’t you feckin’ bother them, whoever this is</em>.”</p>
<p>“Okay… Monitor, you there?”</p>
<p>The pleasant, professional voice of the female navigator from her date answered.</p>
<p>“This is Alia. Lieutenant Monitor’s currently on-mission in Barcelona. Would you like to be alerted when he is next available?”</p>
<p>“No thanks. Tell him good hunting.” She swapped. “Hey, Vitamin! Are you busy?”</p>
<p>“Currently assisting with surgery,” said Vitamin. “Aside from that, I’m on a forty-hour shift. My apologies, Lieutenant, but I’m breaking contact.”</p>
<p>Meteor flicked her discarded drink umbrella across the table.</p>
<p>“No dice?” Volt seemed absorbed in sampling his drink’s bouquet. <em>Lucky him with his fancy olfactory senses…</em></p>
<p>“Not yet,” Meteor huffed. “Okay, I’m delegating authority! I’ll call Turtle in a sec. Deco, Volt, get who you can.”</p>
<p>Deco cracked off a salute. Volt nodded with purpose. Their subsequent chatter was lost in her own focus.</p>
<p>“Asagi! My friends and I are going to do something fun, are you busy?”</p>
<p>“Aww, are you kidding? The new season of <em>How To Date A Human</em> is gonna drop in twenty-six minutes!”</p>
<p>“Come on, you can watch it later!”</p>
<p>“I love you but not <em>that</em> much,” Asagi giggled. “This is a huge cross-media event, I just can’t disappoint my Bustr followers! Plus Kohaku and Sanke took off work to watch it with me, and we’ve been on a hype train for months! Sorry to disappoint, sis, but I’ll catch you next time, okay? And when I do, I’ll buy.”</p>
<p>“All right, but I’m holding you to that.” Meteor swapped once more. “Commander Turtle, this is Lieutenant Showa, are you available for immediate amicable fraternization with lower ranks?”</p>
<p>“Sadly no, Meteor,” she let her down reluctantly, “I’m on my way to discuss matters of succession with Sloth. But while I have you, let me just say congratulations. I’ve never seen a Hunter bounce back so far so fast from such a devastating injury. I’ll do all I can to impress that upon the base commander and recommend the restoration of your Captain rank.”</p>
<p>“Um.” Meteor smiled. “Thank you, ma’am.”</p>
<p>“My pleasure, Meteor. The Hunters surely have some interesting times ahead. Do take care of yourself.”</p>
<p>She cut out. Meteor checked with her impromptu mission team.</p>
<p>“Well?”</p>
<p>“Windsor got leave to visit family, Datollo’s on retainer for a mission Monarch’s doing, all my Combat Analysis guys are out, but at least Nouveau’s in,” Deco popped a thumbs-up. “He’ll have an open window in an hour. How ‘bout you, Volt?”</p>
<p>“Failed,” Volt reported. “Fram’s training. Says the rest of Decomms is busy. Sandia’s breaking in new hires. Tried my department. Not the partying type.”</p>
<p>“So that’s just four so far…” Meteor rubbed under her lower lip. “Skittle’s comm went to voicemail, but they’d never forgive me if I left them out.” She slapped the table and scooted out. “I’ll get them moving in person and knock out a little upgrading while I’m there. Fellow lieutenants,” she straightened up like a general, “we will rendezvous in sixty minutes at the Depth Charge.”</p>
<p>Deco mock-gasped. “Enemy territory, Commander?”</p>
<p>“Fortify yourself, Lieutenant! We’ve dealt with the likes of them before! But <em>this</em> time we won’t stop at just karaoke!”</p>
<p>“Risk assessment?” Volt replied straight-faced, not missing a beat.</p>
<p>“Heavy! Break for preparations and return ready for action!”</p>
<p>“Understood,” he allowed himself a smirk.</p>
<p>Flanked by her friends, Meteor struck what she was sure was a killer pose as she pointed to the door.</p>
<p>“Veracruz Fourth Celebratory Unit, <em>hurry up and wait!</em>”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>The upgrade lab had a long way in a short time. With walls demolished and equipment moved in, what was once a miniature jail of tight quarantine cells was as bright and breezy as a past-century medical ward. There was space to grow, and complicated surgical arms on the multiple slabs suggested Skittle was just getting started.</p>
<p>Meteor strode right in. Golau swept the floor with an honest-to-goodness broom, looking a little downtrodden. Their antennae drooped like sad dog ears, putting a damper on Meteor’s buzzy happiness.</p>
<p>“What’s up, Your Grace?” She gently broached.</p>
<p>They sighed between sweeps. “Just tidying. Skittle’s returning from some work they can’t tell me about.”</p>
<p>“I’d think either of those would make you happier than you look right now.”</p>
<p>They propped the broom against a door frame.</p>
<p>“This is it, is it?”</p>
<p>“What is?”</p>
<p>“The park, <em>my</em> park, is going to re-open next week, I’m told. My little vacation’s almost up. And then with you done with your roster, you won’t be needing us anymore, will you? With how busy everyone is around here, this might be the last we see of each other…”</p>
<p>Meteor laughed, sympathetically. “Aww, Golau, just because a Hunter’s done with her list of Mavericks doesn’t mean she’s forbidden from visiting the medics!”</p>
<p>“It doesn’t?” They perked a little.</p>
<p>“Oh, gosh, of course not. There’s no way I’d stop coming to bask in your sunshine. Besides, there’s always room for some sort of upgrade, and with the way I’ve been coming back lately I’ll still need <em>some</em>body as a preferred technician.”</p>
<p>“But you’re so strong!” Golau’s eyes shined with anxious admiration. “What if you’re never smashed up again?”</p>
<p>She took the sweet little mothfairy by the hand. “Then I’ll come on my own time and visit. And as for your time here? We could always use more permanent help. I’m actually surprised Skittle hasn’t pulled strings to get you officially aboard…”</p>
<p>A sharp two-tone cough pierced the exchange. Skittle flitted in under a personal invisible stormcloud.</p>
<p>“S’because I want to keep my dear sib well outta this line’a work, like.”</p>
<p>“Oh, Skittle,” their twin rolled their big eyes, “I can handle it!”</p>
<p>“Of course you <em>can</em>, but I’ll be damned if you <em>do</em>. There’s lessons you learn hunting Mavericks for a living, lessons I’d rather not have you learn.”</p>
<p>“Oh come now,” Golau flipped their wrist, smiling, “it’s so fun here! The people are so nice and the technology is so… shiny! And I’m capable enough to help, aren’t I? I’m just like you!”</p>
<p>Skittle angrily zipped straight up to their sibling’s face and leveled an index finger between their eyes.</p>
<p>“No, no you aren’t. Not yet you aren’t. And that’s a right <em>blessing</em>, that is.”</p>
<p>“But—!”</p>
<p>Skittle advanced aggressively, leading with their finger, bully-fluttering Golau back and back right up to the wall. Meteor tried to step away, but moving would only have drawn attention, so she awkwardly stood there and bore witness.</p>
<p>“You are <em>not</em> staying around long enough to let the dark slide in,” Skittle declared in the angry growling tone reserved for wit’s end, “not while I’m alive to love you you aren’t. I won’t risk another <em>me</em> out there. I <em>can’t</em> be having with it. You’re finishing your vacation and going back to Oakwood with the light in your eyes and the smile on your face to live the longest and happiest life you can live with the kindest and friendliest people you can find or by Mother Church I will clip your wings and glue your hair and throw your toys in the <em>sea</em>, Golau Gwyfyn. <em>Be told</em>.”</p>
<p>Meteor ventured to cough a tiny cough.</p>
<p>Skittle shut their eyes, affected a theatrical full-body sigh in and out, roughly grabbed Golau by the ears and kissed their forehead.</p>
<p>“We’ll talk more later, you and I. <em>Jyst ddim o flaen y Protestaniaid</em>.”</p>
<p>Golau giggled. “As you like.”</p>
<p>Skittle let them go. “Pardons, Meteor, got a bit cross with Proteus for professional reasons. Shouldn’t’ve brought it with me. So what can we do for you? Uppies from Moby Jane?”</p>
<p>“Well yes, but I also wanted to invite you two to a party.”</p>
<p>Golau quite literally brightened, making a little inward crescendo-gasp of excitement. Skittle clamped their hand over their mouth before they exploded.</p>
<p>“Done. Where and when, like?”</p>
<p>“I wanted to take you and a few others around the Depth Charge again to get more use out of it. But that depends on if you can work fast enough to meet the others there in under an hour…”</p>
<p>Golau, mouth still clamped, giddily vibrated their fists and flutter-bounced in the air.</p>
<p>“You wanna see how <em>fast</em> we work, do you? Then hop on that slab and don’t blink.”</p>
<p>They snapped their fingers, flooding Meteor’s perception with the menu of new items.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>&gt; VWES Options</p>
<p>Last pick of the line. Make ‘em good.</p>
<p>“Chorus Cannon” – Wide, weaponized blast of precision-directed sonic vibration. Travels through bodies and shoves low-mass ones backward. 24 shots.</p>
<p>“Shock Lance” – Narrow, weaponized blast of precision-directed sonic vibration. Hurts more than than Chorus Cannon, but stops at the first body it contacts. 16 shots.</p>
<p>“Echo Shields” – This might be too clever by half, but applying Sounding Humpback’s DNA to your shield battery will add a shockwave effect every time it activates. Upon taking enough damage to flash your shields, your body will emit a two-meter blast of moderate sonic damage and kinetic force. The pushback affects objects of a mass equal to or lesser than your body. Theoretically infinite, but practically limited to about 10 “shots” or less, given that each activation means that you’ve taken a chunk of damage.</p>
<p>Synergy:</p>
<p>Tactically speaking, you’re tricked out with what you got. Only way to get them better is to snag some more DNA, but don’t be in a hurry for that, yeah?</p>
<p>&gt; Extra Stuff</p>
<p>“Breach Jump” – Replaces the thrusters in your tail to allow for a burst of omnidirectional acceleration above water. As in a <em>double-jump</em>. Combined with your existing Chaser Dash, you’ll achieve the maximum mobility currently feasible for your body type. 40,000z.</p>
<p>“Repulsor Wing II” – Maybe if your butterfly shield had some offensive power you’d get more mileage out of it before breakin’ the thing. For twenty grand you can get a replacement with one of the following flavors baked in:</p>
<p>- Electric Element: Zappy. Enemies touch it, they get stunned.</p>
<p>- Explosion Element: <em>Huge</em> kinetic knockback on a bash. For a given value of huge.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor blinked the data flood away. It wasn’t even a choice.</p>
<p>
  <em>Thanks, Sound… </em>
</p>
<p>“I’ve <em>never</em> had a double jump or weaponized shields. I’ll take both.”</p>
<p>“Well won’t that make <em>you</em> a fiery salmon,” Skittle remarked. “A far cry from when you were just a dash-speedy tank, it is.”</p>
<p>Golau fluttered around one of the surgical arms. “Would you like to spend anything else?”</p>
<p>“It’s now or never on some of ‘em,” Skittle added, hands blurring through tool placements.</p>
<p>Meteor frowned a little. “I didn’t think rights to enemy data expired that quickly after a roster.”</p>
<p>“They don’t. But the elemental add-ons are gonna show up as a breach of regs when Mirkwood’s people do a review on the completed rosters. Unless I delete the evidence. Which I will.”</p>
<p>“Are you saying that stuff like Gaia Sword or the Hanabi option…?”</p>
<p>“They constitute giving you more of a bite at the data than you’re owed, yes.”</p>
<p>Golau fiddled with Meteor’s schematic on a private screen. “Quite naughty, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>“Then why’d you charge me for them?”</p>
<p>Skittle entered data faster than Meteor could read. “Cover story. Parts and labor. Something to satisfy Sheepy’s people.”</p>
<p>“Mirkwood, Sheepy… they do have names, Skittle.”</p>
<p>“They haven’t earned ‘em yet. Now what’re ya buyin’?”</p>
<p>“Empty out my account again. Stick that explosion on a Repulsor Wing. It’ll come in great handy for getaways.”</p>
<p>“Right you are. Now lay back and hold still.”</p>
<p>Flashes and blurs of sparkle and color zipped every which way as Meteor lay back at an incline. Skittle worked their magic on her LIFE cell’s shield battery while Golau tinkered with ludicrous speed at a workbench. The latter fairy sang a little to themself.</p>
<p>“<em>Paid ag ofni, dim ond deilen, gura, gura ar y ddôr</em>… hee hee hee hee…”</p>
<p>“Is that the good kind of giggle, Your Grace?” Meteor called over.</p>
<p>“Oh, the very best.”</p>
<p>“What’s that song?”</p>
<p>“Lullaby, an ancient one,” Skittle clarified from somewhere below her chin. “<em>Don’t fear, it’s just a leaf, beating, beating on the door</em>.”</p>
<p>“Because this darling leaf can beat right back, you see?” Golau carried a hexagon the size of Meteor’s hand and began fitting it to the back of her left arm. “Clever, aren’t I?”</p>
<p>“It is. I like it.”</p>
<p>Golau bit their lips to keep their smile at least partially restrained.</p>
<p>In no time at all the twins were done. Skittle replaced Meteor’s armor and sealed the seams.</p>
<p>“And that’ll do you. Step over there in the open and give the Wing a try-out. But not the Jump, you’d bash your head.”</p>
<p>“There ought to be a mnemonic motion entry in the limb’s root file now,” Golau encouraged.</p>
<p>Meteor hopped down. The device on her arm had some weight to it, but nothing affecting mobility. As advertised, she knew intrinsically how to use it. She imagined a Victoroid dashing for her, planted her feet and swung. A kinetic barrier shaped like luna moth wings flared in and out for the duration of the swing. It was about her height, and trailed sparkles.</p>
<p>Golau squealed happily. Skittle merely grinned.</p>
<p>Meteor made a fist and activated it in place. On closer inspection, the sparkles were holographic. “Oh thank goodness, I thought it was a glitter generator…”</p>
<p>Golau begged with their eyes.</p>
<p>“I don’t want it to be, no.”</p>
<p>“Aw.”</p>
<p>“There there,” Skittle patted them. “Now let’s wipe what data needs wiping so’s I don’t get pinned to a corkboard, yeah?”</p>
<p>“But the partyyyy!”</p>
<p>“There’s time enough. Off you go, Meteor, we’ll be there.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>All the stars of the Milky Way hung over the Depth Charge, the dockside bar of the 6th Marine Unit. Meteor arrived several minutes early to make a good impression. Nouveau waited outside, arms crossed. He seemed distracted, his head and eyes tilting in little saccades suggesting a full-UI data feed.</p>
<p>“Lieutenant.” He blinked. “I mean, Showa.”</p>
<p>“Captain. I mean, Nouveau. Still working?”</p>
<p>“Not as such. Reading Bustr comments regarding the Hunter leadership…”</p>
<p>“First rule of Bustr: never read the comments.”</p>
<p>“I can’t help it. Wars are won and lost on intelligence, even social cold wars.”</p>
<p>“Something you want to talk about? We have time, unless everybody else is already inside.”</p>
<p>“They aren’t.” Nouveau closed his eyes and pinched his nose. “You recall, I’m sure, when Turtle addressed us about Halcyon. Asking us to keep her honest while she fought to boot him.”</p>
<p>“Yeah?”</p>
<p>“She was mostly talking to me. I approved of Rhodes well enough, good man with a tough job, but I felt strongly that Halcyon was exactly who the Hunters needed. Bringing Los Mortales back to the fold, investing heavily in Cyberspace, every part he played in creating Repliforce… even the parleys and dealmaking with lesser evils. It was all, fundamentally, to save lives. He did what I’d have done in his position, right up until he decided trotting out Primus was a good idea.”</p>
<p>Meteor nodded, letting him speak.</p>
<p>“I suppose…” he studied his hand, “I suppose I never allowed myself to think the Hunters could do wrong. If we aren’t the solution, if reploids hunting reploids isn’t the only way, then we’re just Mavericks with sanction. Aren’t we?”</p>
<p>Meteor listened to the dark lapping water at the docks, gathering her thoughts before replying.</p>
<p>“Deco told me something recently. Me and Skittle both, actually. She said a choice is never more important than when we make it. And for the people we save, the ones who have the most to gain, nothing we do is ever wasted.”</p>
<p>Nouveau listened attentively. Meteor looked at the stars and rocked back on her heels.</p>
<p>“I don’t make a habit of talking about my politics, but… Halcyon had the right idea. Overall, I mean. He might’ve been a jerk, but he saved lives, and he wasn’t responsible for what General chose to do. Halcyon just used what power he had to save those who had the most to gain. Like any of us do, every single mission. It wasn’t wasted effort for the people still alive to criticize him.”</p>
<p>Meteor looked back down. Nouveau’s posture had completely changed. She had rarely seen him more at ease.</p>
<p>“That’s not a common opinion, Showa. I wouldn’t have expected it from you.”</p>
<p>“I know. Guess I’m just too serious sometimes.”</p>
<p>“Not at all. Tell me, Showa… absent Halcyon, do you think we’re doing the right thing?”</p>
<p>Meteor walked over and gave him a chiding knuckle-tap to the forehead. “Of course we are. We’re not Mavericks, we’re the furthest <em>thing</em> from Mavericks. They serve themselves, full stop. They call themselves Revolutionaries, but how will their revolution end? Have you ever seen a Maverick village? A Maverick <em>government</em>? Can you even picture one?”</p>
<p>“Yes, actually. Skulls and dark spires are involved. No future for the world, that.”</p>
<p>“No kidding! Their only future is power creep. Stronger and stronger, no freaking limit or control. A boot stamping on another boot, forever. That’s not us. We will <em>never</em> be like them. We do what we can to protect as much as we can to the best of our judgment, and if what we do is flawed, or ends up looking flawed…”</p>
<p>Sounding Humpback’s voice resonated in her memory, “<em>Only future generations can decide whether we are truly Maverick or not</em>…”</p>
<p>“… Then we adjust,” Meteor finished. “We keep trying, better and better. The future generations that we make sure exist are welcome to hate us, because they’ll be free to choose.”</p>
<p>Nouveau examined the sky in thought. “The price of being a Hunter…”</p>
<p>“You dig the best ditches, they give you a bigger shovel.”</p>
<p>He snorted a laugh. “You sound like the fairy.”</p>
<p>“Heh. Maybe. All I know is, we have rules. Responsibilities. And if we hold to them, and stay what people need us to be, then in spite of everything, we are the solution.”</p>
<p>“Until we pull a Halcyon,” Nouveau smiled.</p>
<p>Meteor laughed away some tension she didn’t know she carried until she dropped it. “Oh gosh that was stupid of him, wasn’t it? Hey, let’s give the freaking Repliforce Army guy the biggest stage in the world and then <em>expect him to stick to the script</em>.”</p>
<p>“A dismal end to a proud career, to be sure.”</p>
<p>“And if I can be demoted with good cause, then he can too.”</p>
<p>“We’re of one mind there, Showa. Thank you.”</p>
<p>Deco’s cheery voice piped up in the distance. “Mimi! Brother!”</p>
<p>“Looks like they’re here.”</p>
<p>Nouveau flipped his hair. “Good. I only have an hour free.”</p>
<p>“Aw, really?!”</p>
<p>“Did you really think the second-in-command of the Veracruz Fourth could drop everything for a night-long social outing?”</p>
<p>Meteor tapped her fingertips together. “Maybe a little…”</p>
<p>“Tsk-tsk,” Deco tsked, “is he being crabby about his schedule like Skittle was on the way here?”</p>
<p>“Hey, princess, <em>some</em> of us have vital science to be done.”</p>
<p>“I don’t, I don’t!” Golau’s wings shed whirligig sparkle effects. Their face looked fit to burst into confetti.</p>
<p>Meteor wiped away the caveats with vigorous hand-waves. “It’s no problem, no problem, we’ll just have to be efficient! Come on, Celebratory Unit, let’s make the most of the time we can snatch from the jaws of work!”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>The party entered the Depth Charge, finding it less active than the night of the ill-fated broadcast but still deserving of its reputation as the base’s off-duty hub.</p>
<p>Nouveau was the first to comment. “I wouldn’t say no to some light private entertainment in a private booth.”</p>
<p>“Oh pishposh,” Deco play-smacked him, “we did karaoke last time! Look, the dance floor’s open.”</p>
<p>“Bet I could out-dance you,” Volt smiled thinly.</p>
<p>“Ooh, bar’s open too,” Skittle rubs their hands. “I can commandeer it, mix us something righteous.”</p>
<p>“With fizz?!” Golau bunched their fists to their cheeks.</p>
<p>“You can’t just commandeer another unit’s bar,” Nouveau groused. “Their hex-tactics games are open, I doubt you could best me there.”</p>
<p>“I can best your <em>face</em>, Cap.”</p>
<p>“What does that even—”</p>
<p>“Mimi,” Deco interrupted, “we’re here in your honor, so why don’t you decide for us?”</p>
<p>“Gotta have fuel first,” Meteor grinned.</p>
<p>“<em>Now you’re talkin’, like</em>,” the twins rubbed their hands and flew in helix formation straight over to the line of stools. And over the bar. The bartender, a female-type Larimar, recoiled more in surprise than in offense.</p>
<p>“Don’t mind them,” Meteor trotted up, “they’re, uh, specialist mixologists and entertainers who signed up after a Maverick destroyed their pub.”</p>
<p>“And it was just <em>terrible</em>,” Deco played along with a gossipy hand-flap, “glass and mahogany everywhere.”</p>
<p>The bartender shrugged with her thick eyebrows as Skittle flitted around the racks like a gnat. “Takes all kinds, I guess. What sort of entertainment?”</p>
<p>“Now you’ve gone and done it,” Skittle muttered at the edge of hearing.</p>
<p>Golau glowed. “Well let, me, show, <em>you!</em>”</p>
<p>Warm-color holographic sunbeams sparkled through cool-color springtime rain as the merry fairy pranced across the bar, projecting an interpretive-dance stage show of nature effects within a radius of several meters. Meteor wasn’t sure what the interpretation was about, if indeed it was about anything, but it was unrelentingly joyous and drew more than a few spectators.</p>
<p>“One’a their routines,” Skittle smiled like the mildly embarrassed sibling they were as they tipped rum into a decanter and swirl it around. They had somehow projected a rainbow bow tie around their neck.</p>
<p>“Cute,” Nouveau observed at a disapproving remove like a stuffy headmaster.</p>
<p>“So what’ll it be, folks?” The bartender tried to regain her territory. “I’m Bluey, by the way.”</p>
<p>Volt tossed Meteor a look full of internal snickering. She elbowed him sharply. “I’ll have—”</p>
<p>“No daiquiris,” Skittle interrupted, “this isn’t a kindergarten.”</p>
<p>“No drink-shaming,” Nouveau scolded.</p>
<p>“Says the guy who’s into cheap beer, like as not.”</p>
<p>Nouveau snootily buffed his shoulder trim. “For your information, mosquito, I was going to order rum, provided that you don’t ruin it with whatever you’re making.”</p>
<p>“Now <em>that’s</em> interesting,” Skittle’s eyes sparkled as Golau fluttered by, blown in a gale of holographic Autumn leaves. “Ever had a Rum Martinez?”</p>
<p>Nouveau scoffed, seating himself and crossing his legs at the knee. “There’s not a chance in the world you could craft one correctly.”</p>
<p>“Oh that is a <em>challenge</em>, like. Bluey! Got any wood chips?”</p>
<p>She looked impressed that he would even ask. “Yes, actually, under where your, uh, entertainer is dancing…”</p>
<p>Skittle buzzed off and clattered under the bar. Volt ignored him and raised a finger to the actual tender. “Riesling.”</p>
<p>“Coming right up. You, ma’am?”</p>
<p>“Mezcal,” Deco took a stool between her and Nouveau.</p>
<p>Bluey nodded Meteor’s way. “And you?”</p>
<p>“I’ll have a cream liqueur.” She glanced down the bar. “Welsh.”</p>
<p>Bluey fixed the orders as Skittle played with fire. They laser-burned the wood chips in a strainer into a teapot and poured in the rum, then tipped the charred chips into an infuser and filled the emptied decanter with smoke laced with the nanomachines responsible for any good buzz in reploids.</p>
<p>They only then noticed Meteor’s drink.</p>
<p>“Holy Mother, is that Merlyn?”</p>
<p>“Said so on the bottle,” she raised her glass to her engineer.</p>
<p>Skittle laughed as light and merrily as their still-dancing sibling. “You’re all right, Meteor, you’re all right. Now watch a master at work.”</p>
<p>With a tiny personal chorus of clinks and swishes chiming underneath the thrumming dance music from the floor and the chattering encouragement of Golau’s appreciative audience, Skittle finished the mix and slid it to Nouveau.</p>
<p>He samples it. His eyebrows went up.</p>
<p>“Well well.”</p>
<p>“That’s high praise from him,” Deco stage-whispered.</p>
<p>Nouveau raised the glass. “To craftsmanship!”</p>
<p>The whole party clinked with him.</p>
<p>“Kanpai!”</p>
<p>“Here here!”</p>
<p>“<em>Iechyd da!</em>”</p>
<p>“Cheers.”</p>
<p>They drank together.</p>
<p>“Just too bad I couldn’t get more of us,” said Meteor. “I would’ve at least liked to introduce Asagi to you guys, but she’s off watching some interspecies romance cartoon.”</p>
<p>“<em>How To Date A Human</em>?” Deco guessed.</p>
<p>“That’s still a thing?” Skittle asked.</p>
<p>“Yeah, Asagi’s big into it. And a couple of my brothers too.”</p>
<p>“Her sibs are all crazy,” Skittle asserted.</p>
<p>“Must be nice to <em>have</em> siblings,” said Volt.</p>
<p>The other five hit him in the crossfire of their gazes.</p>
<p>The mood warmed and grew animated with stories about siblings and family.</p>
<p>“My mom ran the company,” Meteor volunteered when it was her turn. “I was lucky. Some people don’t even meet the owner, but she took a real interest. The lead reploid designer did too, but more… y’know, distantly.”</p>
<p>“Mm,” Volt nodded.</p>
<p>“Some are like that,” Deco noncommittally agreed.</p>
<p>“He wasn’t bad, don’t get me wrong. Always watched my show.”</p>
<p>“Wait, you had a show?” Golau’s antennae twitched.</p>
<p>“Not really, it was just a recurring segment,” she self-consciously backpedaled. “Current events in historical context. It was meant for kids, classrooms even.”</p>
<p>“Don’t sell yourself short,” Deco leaned on her, “it was a whole production!”</p>
<p>“They spun it off into a news series with off-the-shelf video editing and me doing all the writing. That’s not <em>really</em> a whole production, even if NHK did carry it…”</p>
<p>Volt’s heavy hand squeezed her shoulder. “Hey. You’re a celebrity for something besides hunting. That’s a fact. Be proud of it.”</p>
<p>Meteor slapped the bar with a wooden thunk, a little harder than she intended. The liquid Welshness had reached her brain.</p>
<p>“You’re right! And you know what else I’m proud of?!”</p>
<p>“Your career?” Guessed Nouveau.</p>
<p>“Your little museum?” Guessed Deco.</p>
<p>“No! Well yes. But no!” Meteor pounded her chest. “This thing! Lemme show you what hundreds of thousands of zenny can <em>do!</em>”</p>
<p>Meteor scooted back and made for the dance floor. Her party dutifully followed.</p>
<p>She had no idea how to dance.</p>
<p>That didn’t stop her.</p>
<p>She had the simple power of observation, after all. She’d seen dances, understood how they worked in theory. She put it all into practice by deftly stringing together moves from completely unrelated forms, from ballet to breakdancing to rural Japanese fisherman’s dance to whatever in the world it was that Golau had done at the bar.</p>
<p>She made a complete fool of herself and it was <em>outstanding</em>.</p>
<p>Her friends applauded and joined her, though somewhat more conformed to genre. Skittle and Golau gave Volt and Nouveau a rather forceful lesson in ballroom dancing. Deco was the last to venture forth.</p>
<p>“Clear some room,” she ordered. “Skittle! Get some Ngozi on the soundtrack!”</p>
<p>“Comin’ up!”</p>
<p>“Who?” Volt asked.</p>
<p>“<em>Her ex</em>,” Meteor and Nouveau replied simultaneously.</p>
<p>Deco commanded the floor with the grace and presence of a pop idol, for she used to date one. She had the whole routine down pat. The Depth Charge enjoyed several professional minutes of her swaying and flowing and belting out lyrics about space travel. At her final bow the entire bar whooped and cheered.</p>
<p>The party reconvened at the edge.</p>
<p>“Well <em>done!</em>” Meteor clapped. “I’m proud of all of you! We’re the best! And you know what else best friends do?!”</p>
<p>“She’s gonna say karaoke,” Skittle smirked.</p>
<p>“<em>You’re darn right it’s karaoke!</em> Bluey, send us something straight, we’re taking a booth!”</p>
<p>“Aye-aye!”</p>
<p>Meteor led her friends to the second room on the left down the hall past the dance floor, well aware of the shrinking window of scheduling. The space was cozy with six bodies in it, but every room had great acoustics. She approached the sound system.</p>
<p>“All right, officers of the Fourth,” Meteor twirled the mic, “get your language files ready, ‘cause there’s no better version of this one than the Japanese original.”</p>
<p>Her friends took their seats. Nouveau sat forward.</p>
<p>“Surprised you’re into this,” Volt commented to him.</p>
<p>“Voices have been singing for over a hundred thousand years, Lieutenant. It’s cultural. And I’m going next.”</p>
<p>“With what?”</p>
<p>“Enya, if the machine has it…”</p>
<p>“Hush you two!” Skittle shushed them as the music started.</p>
<p>The opening lines were merely slow vocalization.</p>
<p>“<em>Na na na, na na na nauu na</em>…”</p>
<p>Deco gasped. “Is that Hundred Bluering? I saw one of her concert videos—”</p>
<p>“Zip it!” Skittle hisses.</p>
<p>Meteor proceeded in her native-set language. Everyone understood.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>Facing my longing, here in this place</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>My crazy, non-stop craving created,</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I don't even know what's true and what's a lie</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>There's so much information</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>It surrounds us and corners us</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Today, once again, I'm being tested</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>The face of the town, so full of sadness</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Is buried by the crowd, by things, in the bustling town</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>And yet another person is swallowed up</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>By a crowd of people wearing the same expressions</em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <em>I'll face it with all my love</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Hanging on to a faint wish</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I'll go, in this paradise that's dried out my heart</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>When you reach out to "give up" or "end it"</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I want to at least shine a soft light ahead of you and keep shining</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A Larimar server stepped in right between verses, set a tray by the couch and backed out with a bow. Golau moved to distribute the drinks, but Skittle slapped their hand and did it themself.</p>
<p>Meteor continued, noticing Deco lip-syncing the Japanese perfectly,</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>When we want to warm somebody's heart</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>We can prepare the words</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>But in this world, everything is hypocritical, nothing means anything</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>All around me I see helplessness</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I've had so many nights when I've gone to sleep wearing despair</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>But I told myself, even as I cried</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>What I have to face and overcome</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Is surely</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>The boundaries my heart has made because it was too scared</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>At the second break between verses, Meteor beckoned to Deco. She vigorously shook her head and held her drink to her chest. Nouveau nudged her but she stayed put. Volt rolled his neck and made a show of preparing to stand up, prompting Deco to hands him her drink and join Meteor.</p>
<p>Meteor shared the mic. Deco laughed under the first couple of lines.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>Yes, we all have the right to freedom and happiness</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>So I have to be moved</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>By words like "surely" and "more"</em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <em>I'll face it with all my love</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Hanging on to a faint reality</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I'll sing, to wipe away the overwhelming confusion</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I'll try to keep things consistent</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>In this ever more chaotic time</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Before I get addicted to what I've been given</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Okay, CODE CRUSH!</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The applause rolled. The two of them took a bow and pointed the mic at Nouveau.</p>
<p>“<em>Nnnnext!</em>”</p>
<p>The time the party spent was a treasure.</p>
<p>True to his plan, Nouveau fished up Enya from the karaoke machine’s extensive archive. Skittle went next with a rendition of “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya,” sampling from a cover done by the reploid band Rock Monster five years prior. They passed off to Golau, who delivers a soulful performance of another recent cover of an old tune: a perennial favorite among reploid partiers called “I Am Not a Robot.” When Deco approached for her solo she picked an early 21<sup>st</sup>-century song Meteor had never heard, something about counting stars. Finally, Volt – stoic Volt, background-loomer Volt, wine-snob Volt – brought down the house with Dragonforce.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>Now here we stand with their blood on our hands</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>We fought so hard, now can we understand</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I'll break the seal of this curse if I possibly can</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>For freedom of ev-er-y maaaaan!</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>So far away we wait for the day</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>For the lives all so wasted and gone</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>We feel the pain of a lifetime lost in a thousand days</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Through the fire and the flames we carry ON!</em>
</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>In the end, time came to call. Meteor’s knot of friends joined her on the way back, chatting and joking and groaning in turn, each of them a castle wall to the other against the outside world. The art-style siblings took turns leaning on each other and then swatting each other away to Sibling Distance. Golau rode on Volt’s shoulders, their elbows on his flat helmet, in no risk of falling but supported by his hands just the same. Skittle fluttered close to Meteor’s side the whole way, conversing when called for but otherwise pleasantly quietly tippled.</p>
<p>Underneath the stars, surrounded by the afterglow of their carousing, it hit her.</p>
<p>She loved them all.</p>
<p>
  <em>No, that’s not it…</em>
</p>
<p>What was the higher logical step beyond a loving friendship?</p>
<p>The click began to click.</p>
<p>
  <em>Oh.</em>
</p>
<p>As her party returned to the Fourth’s big square donut of real estate and started to split off, she was chilled by a sense of finality. The end of a roster, the end of a night out, the end of a rare moment when all her best friends were in the same place at the same time with no purpose but each other. She didn’t know when she would ever have such a moment again.</p>
<p>She couldn’t let it end with just a fade.</p>
<p>“Hey,” she called out.</p>
<p>The five others paused.</p>
<p>“I, um.”</p>
<p>“Out with it,” Skittle prompted.</p>
<p>She tried to speak.</p>
<p>She didn’t know what to say.</p>
<p>She smiled and fought through the awkwardness to say what mattered. The only thing that ever mattered. The truth.</p>
<p>“You guys… are the best.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor awoke, late, recumbent on your room’s slab. A familiar tingling filled her mind.</p>
<p>“Meteor Showa.”</p>
<p>It was Valence Proteus. She know better than to ask how Sixteenth’s proprietary comm system worked.</p>
<p>“We’ve made a breakthrough regarding Soul Format,” he said. “Report to your commander at once.”</p>
<p>The sensation lifted.</p>
<p>
  <em>A breakthrough? That can only mean…</em>
</p>
<p>She hustled to the Command Room.</p>
<p>Turtle was there, looking pleased with herself. Valence Proteus was present in holo.</p>
<p>“Reporting,” Meteor saluted. “What’s this breakthrough?”</p>
<p>“The fruit of past investments,” Turtle keyed something in on the central table. A satellite view of an island blinks into the main screen.</p>
<p>Proteus flicked his flagellum mustache. “Laguz Island has reported success in determining the origins and precise nature of Soul Format. The chief on-site DNA researcher believes that, with you as an experimental subject, he can render all reploids invulnerable to effects such as the one you suffered.”</p>
<p>“Wow… so where did it come from?”</p>
<p>“Appropriately enough,” Proteus gestured, “that very outpost.”</p>
<p>She squinted. “I can’t say I’m familiar with it…”</p>
<p>Turtle brought up an interior map of the facility. “It’s called Laguz, one of the surviving islands of French Polynesia. France sold it to us under Commander Wong, and since then it’s been given over to the rather creatively-named Reploid Research Laboratory.”</p>
<p>“A Maverick occupation some years ago resulted in the Soul Erasure phenomenon,” Proteus explained. “The site chief is convinced that Mavericks who fled ahead of the retirement force preserved enough data to recreate it in a more limited yet no less dangerous form. In order to facilitate synthesizing an effective immunity treatment, he needs you – you, personally – to travel there and submit to examination.”</p>
<p>It made sense. After Skittle and Proteus’s ministrations, her system was a one-off. Still, she wondered…</p>
<p>“Can’t he come here?”</p>
<p>“No,” Proteus dilated his cyclops eye’s six pupils. “The Laboratory’s hardware is essential, <em>despite</em> Scatter Seelie’s opinion, and it cannot be moved.”</p>
<p>“If you’ll forgive me for asking, Commander, what was their opinion?”</p>
<p>“Untenable,” his pupils narrowed. “They believed they could fabricate a sufficient duplicate here if given time. That may well be true, but frankly, entrusting the likes of Scatter Seelie with the technological schematics of the DNA equipment of the Reploid Research Laboratory would constitute…” Proteus’s pupils dilated in a loading-circle pattern for the length of his very meaningful pause, “… <em>unacceptable liability</em>.”</p>
<p>“I understand,” she understated. “Then I’ll go. Who exactly will I be meeting?”</p>
<p>Turtle flipped a few holo-keys at her armrest control. “One of our best – a fish-type as well, coincidentally. He was built by a scientist named Gate, a true luminary in the field of reploid DNA studies. Trust me when I say there are few better in that academic field than this gentleman here.”</p>
<p>The face came up. His profile had some interesting angles, all the clean steel-trimmed geometry describing a hammerhead shark.</p>
<p>Turtle gestured to it. “Metal Shark Player.”</p>
<p>Meteor had heard stranger names.</p>
<p>“I’ll be glad to meet him. Straight beam-in, then?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Proteus nodded, “Laguz is thoroughly secure. Regular status scans as of twenty-nine minutes ago indicate that all personnel are in nominal condition. Player made them himself, and I would trust him with my own life.”</p>
<p>“Glad to hear it. I’ll head right out.”</p>
<p>“Lieutenant,” Proteus acknowledged before blinking out.</p>
<p>“Take your time once you’re there,” Turtle smiled. “Your roster is complete, after all, and lacking Halcyon, we’re in a new world. I think you’re due some time on a quiet island to celebrate.”</p>
<p>“Yes Ma’am,” she smiled back. “Thanks for everything.”</p>
<p>“My pleasure, Meteor.”</p>
<p>Meteor boarded the waiting teleporter. Her destination was already entered.</p>
<p>She left Veracruz with nothing but hope for a pleasant check-up.</p>
<p>The glittering evening expanse of the South Pacific greeted her.</p>
<p>Missiles whistled in from above.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HUNTER ARCHIVE:<br/>“Meteor Showa”</p>
<p>Sendai Reliable Underwater Construction Number 27, Koi Series 04, Meteor Showa, is a Rank A Maverick Hunter serving as Lieutenant in the Veracruz Fourth Overland Unit. Her family includes the seven other members of the Koi Series: Golden Chagoi (01), Scrap Kohaku (02), Construction Sanke (03), Armor Tancho (05), Swift Asagi (06), Bright Kujaku (07), and School Kumonryu (08, deceased).</p>
<p>Showa was created for the purposes of underwater welding and demolition, but a personal interest in history led her toward a career in education. After attaining an accelerated-curriculum Master’s Degree from Tokyo University, she hosted contemporary historical segments on the Japanese children’s program [i]Where the Calendar Ends[/i]. The Maverick War convinced her that the course of history required defenders, and so she joined the Maverick Hunters as a Public Relations specialist, but it wasn’t until the Doppler War that she served in a significant combat role. Much to her surprise, she found that she was good at it.</p>
<p>In the years since, she has acquitted herself admirably, working to become a reliable veteran and never ceasing to improve herself in the name of making a better world.</p>
<p>If I may be allowed a space in which to speak personally, it has recently been my pleasure to serve as her primary repair physician between my duties of summarizing our historical archives. I, Lifesaver B-12 Veracruz, wish Lieutenant Showa every success in her future endeavors, and will myself endeavor to ensure that she remains in active service for as long as she so desires.</p>
<p>Most Significant Maverick Retirements:<br/>- Battletower Barnacle<br/>- Glass Lionfish<br/>- Magiër Korenwolf<br/>- Orichalcum of Rare Earth<br/>- Captain Quadraginta Quattuor<br/>- Sleet Lamassu<br/>- Meganeural Spectrod<br/>- Arc Morpho</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0024"><h2>24. Final Mission: Laguz Island</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meteor fights for her life through the home of the Reploid Research Laboratory, seeking the site chief, Metal Shark Player. Mavericks old and new stand against her.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Meteor’s teleport pad stood on a jutting section of rock at the base of a taller cliff.</p>
<p>It wasn’t an outdoors type of pad. Someone had moved it.</p>
<p>The missiles bearing down were assault-craft tier, no small mechaniloid junk.</p>
<p>Her first instinct was to leap out to the sea, but her situational awareness was still scrambling up from zero and who knew what lay in wait.</p>
<p>She leapt to the cliff. And then leapt again in midair. Her tail jets flared a newly supercharged Breach Jump, carrying her to the rock face while the first missiles rained into the pad and destroyed her easy exit. She clung hard and kickjumped up, struggling like a salmon.</p>
<p>Another wave of missiles streaked much closer to the cliff on the same vertical bearing.</p>
<p>Meteor jumped to her left and second-jumped back to her right, a successful dodge of falling ordinance both times. Rock crumbled under her grip and dropped her left arm as a third missile plummeted down her lane. She planted her boots on the wall and double-dash-jumped right for it as her Repulsor Wing flared out.</p>
<p>She swatted the missile, the arc of her arm and the added explosive force of the kinetic barrier knocking it clear away.</p>
<p>An unevenness in the rock gave her a more secure handhold and a precious second to reassess.</p>
<p>
  <em>Okay. I’m on a cliff, on an island, being shot at. Okay.</em>
</p>
<p>“Meteor Showa to—”</p>
<p>A storm of loud crackling static clawed at her mind. She shut off comms and heard more whistling, but not from above.</p>
<p>She flew on her double-jump. Identical missiles to the previous waves impacted where she had hung. She spared a glance to the sea; out in the water, rectangular shapes were shelling her. <em>Metal Hawks?</em> No – Metal Hawks were air platforms, Metal Rheas were ground platforms, and Metal Penguins were for sea assault.</p>
<p>Repliforce sea assault.</p>
<p>
  <em>What the heck happened here?</em>
</p>
<p>She kept climbing. Another perpendicular barrage blew stone off the cliff under her, but she stayed well ahead of it. A fresh parallel wave suggested the pattern: two and two. No sweat. She could simply dodge her way straight to the top.</p>
<p>Tiny mechaniloids suddenly burrowed from the rock face and clambered down toward her, timed to the vertical barrage.</p>
<p>Rat mechaniloids.</p>
<p>Adding quick bursts of buster fire to her jump-dodging around the missiles was an annoying wrinkle, but her defensive state of mind aimed to buy the <em>safest</em> jumping distance she could, not the longest. She progressed through the wave of rats and double wave of Metal-series missiles.</p>
<p>The missiles stuck to the pattern: vertical, vertical, horizontal, horizontal, though never quite in the same arrays twice. She clung and jumped, clung and double-jumped.</p>
<p>“Showa to—<em>agh!</em>” The static volume was painful. Whatever operation was running definitely wanted to control what information left.</p>
<p>
  <em>How in the world did they thwart Sixteenth Unit scans of one of their own outposts?</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>How else, Lieutenant?</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Traitors.</em>
</p>
<p>Two slow Wall Cancers scuttled into her path just as more rats swept down and another missile wave followed them.</p>
<p>Meteor switched to Arbor Wall, charged up her throat, and entered the Cancers’ range. They quickly built up their energy balls. Meteor fired a seed to secure a perpendicular cyberwood platform several meters above her and jumped right up under it. Her grip slowly skidded down the rock face as the balls ricocheted off and the rats crawled over the roadblock.</p>
<p>The volcanic blast of her Hinoiki breath melted through the entire plague wave, ate into the stone and ignited the wood. The missile coming for her impacted hard and shattered it into smoking debris plinking off her face and shoulders. She jumped through the smoke, drawing her Gaia Sword and cracking the crabs – a swing through the left first, then a wall grab and double-jumped past the right one, gouging a slash into the cliff on her way past.</p>
<p>Her fingertips stuck hung tight as she looked back and down to restore situational awareness on the Metal Penguins.</p>
<p>The bombardiers were the least of her problems. A dragon was flying her way.</p>
<p>It was an Eregion-model mechaniloid, an enormous emerald green anti-air creature.</p>
<p>An all-too-familiar figure stood on its shoulder, arms crossed.</p>
<p>“You’re a long way from home,” Captain Decim shouted. “I’ll roast you here and now, <em>Fire Fish of Veracruz!</em>”</p>
<p>Meteor was literally up against a wall, but it was still the high ground.</p>
<p>She jumped and popped out a three-for-one shot of Frost Bomb with the swing of her buster arm. She airjumped and grabbed hold again, building a charge as the dragon’s own charge-whine reached its peak.</p>
<p>Two of her bombs stuck, one to a wing and one to the unoccupied shoulder, while the third missed the jaw. The Eregion breathed a line of plasma orbs nearly as big as Meteor.</p>
<p>She was a sitting duck.</p>
<p>So she flew.</p>
<p>The first spheres of the stream hammered the cliff, tearing out chunks of stone as she dropped past them. She triggered the Frost Bombs to splash, seizing patches of the dragon in icy hard-setting fluid. Decim’s expression alone was worth the fall in height. He braced his stance and flipped his shoulder mortars forward, but the last giant bead of the plasma chain slammed into her.</p>
<p>Her Echo Shields boomed like whalesong, catching Decim in the radius. The blast repelled him like an opposing magnet. His shots went comically wide and his shields strobed to put Golau’s light shows to shame. Meteor had intended to land on him, but the blastback had blown him clear off his mount by the time her feet hit the dragon’s shoulder.</p>
<p>He snatches its tail on the way down, hanging tight. The dragon reached its tearing claws for her.</p>
<p>She dashed backwards, propelled not only by her boots but the thermite cone blazing from her mouth. The fiery splash did grievous damage to the ice-weakened hull and gave ordinary grief to all around it.</p>
<p>Meteor twitched in the air and fired her tail boosters to slam back into the cliff. She skidded and slipped, but the exchange with the dragon was over. It swooped up past her, flight systems still alive. Decim’s bellow dopplered past.</p>
<p>“<em>Ready lateral fiiiiire</em>!”</p>
<p>Breach Jump propelled her up the rest of the cliff. Nothing else came for her.</p>
<p>She crested the lip of the cliff and saw why. Knot Berets at six stationary turrets, arranged three and three, had their barrels pointed straight at her. A full dozen rat drones darted between them. The dragon took Decim overhead, well out of her range, arcing toward somewhere further afield behind the turrets. Behind the guns stretched a wide paved space with a single hangar and a forest behind it.</p>
<p>
  <em>This is a heck of a gauntlet.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Time to show it who’s the A-Rank.</em>
</p>
<p>She fired two Spark Hand-Drills and got moving. The spreading trios of electric-linked drill bits took out four of the missiles and scored lucky hits on two of the rat drones. The rest of the little buggers flowed around and swarm for her ankles as she outran the remaining incoming shots.</p>
<p>Meteor quick-swapped to Frost Bomb and sprayed two clusters on her way up the highest vertical leap of her life. The bombs landed and the rats mobbed them like they were cartoon cheese. She hit the trigger and exterminated the lot. She landed on the slick patch and roared past the first enemy barrage over the frictionless dash.</p>
<p>The second barrage had better luck; one missile intercepted her, but a glittery flap of the Repulsor Wing kept her safe. Nothing reached her but the noise. She passed into the front tier of turrets and faced the unluckiest Knot Beret in the world. He took a Hinoiki practically point-blank and <em>disappeared</em> from the waistline up.</p>
<p>Meteor fired two Remote Koi into the air and Chaser Dashed down the turret row. The back tier saw where she was going and opened fire; she jumped, jumped again, and overleapt the three missiles. It was like flying. It <em>was</em> flying. She crashed saber-first into the second gunner and Chaser Dashed to the next as her koi harassed the back tier.</p>
<p>The third gunner tried to engage her directly, but the sakura-trailing Gaia blade dismissed him. She moved to menace the other three, but they had already abandoned the turret controls to try a team effort to shoot her fish. The coordinated pistol barrage simply couldn’t get through the scales of the miniature Ginrin Showas. The fish dished out much more than they got. Two Knots came untied and she solved the third by cutting straight through him.</p>
<p>The hangar ahead of her rolled its entryway like a garage door. Her run slowed to a cautious plod and she ordered her fish closer.</p>
<p>The slow rise of the steel revealed three ride armors: a Raiden, an Eagle, and a Sea Lion. Meteor rolled her neck, brimming with confidence.</p>
<p>“Maria, Maria, Maria… gonna make your losses three for three? Well come on, I’m having fun!”</p>
<p>The door kept rising. The armors were unoccupied.</p>
<p>“Um.”</p>
<p>Rat drones rained from the hangar ceiling and swarmed for the cockpits.</p>
<p>The late Liege Iteratton burrowed up from the ground. His eyes were blank, his snarling face wooden, his posture bestial. All the signs of a DNA resurrection…</p>
<p>The zenny dropped. Laguz Island <em>studied</em> DNA. Meteor was stuck on the Island of Doctor Player, and if he could fool Sixteenth, that place might have been compromised for a long, long time.</p>
<p>Meteor put her thoughts on pause as Iteratton charged her. Three rat drones emerged from the chest aperture where the tails of his rat-king-aesthetic armor spiraled together. Meteor charged her Melter, sicced her koi on the pilot rats downrange, and reached for her Zanbato.</p>
<p>Iteratton burrowed into the pavement with furious gnawing and clawing. His rats remained above and made for her legs.</p>
<p>Meteor splashed a Prominence, but the rodents were more nimble than she remembered.  Her koi explosively sacrificed themselves into the Sea Lion’s cockpit an instant before she switched back to Frost Bomb and pulled another jump-and-shoot. Chaser Dash carried her farther than the rats could nibble and Breach Jump lifted her higher than they could leap, but she herself was much less interesting to them than her bombs. They caught one each and Meteor trigger them immediately, fusing them to the ground on little quick-dry stalagmites.</p>
<p>The Raiden and Eagle were in good shape and started to move, but the Sea Lion was flame-scorched and immobile. A single rat head peeked out of the rims of the Raiden and Eagle, making it look for all the world like they were being piloted by lone mice. It would have been a lot funnier if they weren’t coming for her. She fired her long dash; the Raiden matched her curve. For a moment – the moment that her buster took to charge back up – they chased each other around an invisible circle some fifty feet wide. Meteor broke it first and shot down the middle. The tiny-headed Raiden’s fists tucked in for a pummeling.</p>
<p>Sparring with Volt taught Meteor enough about fisticuffs to dodge the opening swing and strike deep. An ordinary splat of thermite prepped the hull for her third-stage buster blast and the Raiden careened away, smoking.</p>
<p>Up above, the Eagle fired. Meteor counterfired a sparkdrill; three homing comets and three lightning drill bits passed each other, the former vanishing against the Repulsor Wing and the latter zapping the ride armor, spasming it in midair.</p>
<p>The ground under Meteor’s feet rumbled.</p>
<p>She escaped, her tailfin just <em>barely</em> ahead of Iteratton’s ravenous incisors gnashing through as he erupted through concrete like it were gravel. She turned and swung her left arm, shield-bashing him with shiny luna moth wings. The repulsor repelled with explosive force, tumbling Iteratton side over side. Meteor chased him with a shot of Frost Bombs; two made contact, but he ignored them in favor of scrambling on all fours again and spawning more drones.</p>
<p>Memories of ancient samurai movies begged Meteor to do something really cool.</p>
<p>She half-turned away from him, right arm across her chest, left hand on her Gaia’s hilt over her left shoulder. The Maverick drew near.</p>
<p>She triggered the Frost splash and dashed to his left. The sky-blue fluid froze his rats to him and spread over his body as her high-speed hi-beam raked his whole body, nose to tail. Her velocity only increased as she crossed the previous splash zone, propelling her toward the hangar on her knee, arm out in a beautiful finish to an iai cut that trailed holographic cherry blossom petals.</p>
<p>New tricks or not, his body was never designed for such a mighty blow. His body started its dying bursts.</p>
<p>Meteor kept skidding on her knee and popped back up into a trot. The Raiden listed to one side at the end of the long dash and crashed into the hangar’s door frame. The Eagle misfired its cannon, only shooting the ground near her as it fell out of the sky. It gracelessly crumpled to its knees and tipped forward. Dead rat drones spilled out like potatoes.</p>
<p>“Ew.”</p>
<p>Meteor checked on its cockpit. Minus some gnaw marks on the controls, it looked serviceable… which was good, because she heard mechanical flapping.</p>
<p>Decim returned on his much injured dragon, flying in from the woods. He brought company: two Tentoroid Black-Shells, the spiky spinny ladybugs.</p>
<p>The Eagle’s cockpit read her body type and, like any modern ride armor, auto-adjusted to fit. <em>Pedals here, controls there – okay, good</em>. She set the onboard buster to charge up, engaged the wing jets and flew for the hangar roof.</p>
<p>“If it was up to me,” Decim shouted over the Eregion’s flapping, “you’d have teleported into a pile of bombs!”</p>
<p>Meteor landed and her ride’s jets quickly cycled back up. “Whad’you want, a thank you?!” She opened fire and boost-jumped to meet the dragon.</p>
<p>The Tentoroids spun past to plink two of the homing shots, but the third struck the Eregion in the chest. Feathering the jets to stay aloft, she addded to the punishment with a Melter rocket and rapid-tapped the Eagle’s trigger at Decim specifically, going for accumulative damage.</p>
<p>The Tentoroids buzzed back and forth and blocked all but two of the ride armor shots. One ladybug took her rocket and flashed under the molten aluminum. The Eregion’s forearm protected its rider; its shields blinked from the plasma that slipped through the body-blocking.</p>
<p>The dragon lowered its arms and flew straight for Meteor.</p>
<p>A quick and furious exchange began.</p>
<p>Meteor herself was agile enough to evade, but her mount wasn’t. The Eagle took a devastating claw-rake from the legs up to the chest as Meteor fired its stored charge into the dragon’s collar. The open wound on the dragon’s shoulder poured out smoke. A twin shot from Decim’s shoulders buffeted the Eagle’s belly. Meteor opened wide and spat him a Melter rocket, but the injured Tentoroid took it again while its partner crashes into the Eagle’s cannon arm. The controls screamed – Meteor abandoned ship, swapped her VWES, gained some air with a Breach Jump and fired a Spark Hand-Drill at the dragon and its keeper.</p>
<p>Electricity sizzled. Drills shrieked through the monster’s hull.</p>
<p>Meteor landed hard on the hangar’s roof. The dragon went down in flames and rolling explosions, crashing through the roof and thundering its demise.</p>
<p>Decim stuck a three-point landing at the opposite edge. His ladybugs, one factory-fresh and one severely wounded, orbited him. The roof was wrecked, smoke billowing out of the colossal hole. He and she occupied opposite ends of a seemingly stable stretch of shallowly-arching metal.</p>
<p>“Think I won,” she called out. “Again.”</p>
<p>Decim ignited his cavalry-style sabers, the high-phase blue glow adding a formal sheen to his officer’s armor. “He’ll rip your immunity out of whatever’s left of you!”</p>
<p>Meteor’s buster whined up to full charge. “Who? Major Quartus?!”</p>
<p>Decim laughed. “<em>I’ll</em> be the Major soon enough! <em>All hail General Quartus!</em>”</p>
<p>The beetles swung out on a pincer maneuver. Decim’s fast-charging cannons blasted two third-stage shots.</p>
<p>Meteor’s speed and agility made a joke of the shots and the beetles both as she took a note from the extremely dead Iteratton and spawned two fish on the move. He hid behind the smoke plume and fired again, Meteor jumped the shots and sent her drones to pincer him.</p>
<p>“I shoulda known you had another Maverick partner!” Meteor jumped his shots again and again; his charge-up was so fast he threw second-stage shots like they were basic buster rounds. “You’re always running back to them!”</p>
<p>Decim strafed around the roof hole to keep it between them, green comets streaking through the dark smoke. “What would Hunters know about allies?!”</p>
<p>The drones’ camera tabs in her mind showed one cannon aiming and firing independently of the other, trying to knock down the fish even as he shot ineffectively for Meteor. She ducked, dodged, juked, jumped.</p>
<p>“Was it the shark who fixed you up?!” She retorted.</p>
<p>His shots were as good as tracer bullets, allowing her to plot his momentum... “I was back on my feet the same hour! What’d it take you, a <em>week?!</em>”</p>
<p>She spat a rocket-propelled Melter grenade, but in came the Tentoroids. She cleared the unmarred ladybug with a double-jump while the injured one valiantly sacrificed itself by eating her thermite. It ruptured as it flew past, providing exactly the cover Decim needed to tag her with a blue third-stage shot. Her shield battery snap-flashed disapproval.</p>
<p>“You’re getting slow, Showa!”</p>
<p>“I’m only slow ‘cause I’m not running!” Koi A successfully lasered him while Koi B darted about to draw his independent fire. “You ran at Nassau! You ran at Maracaibo! Nice job, Repliforce! The Most Cowardly Army in History!”</p>
<p>Decim’s pet Tentoroid spins to his aid and absorbed her fishbeams. “<em>Shut up!</em>”</p>
<p>He finally broke clear of the smoke and dashed for her, sabers out, alongside the hole. Meteor planted her feet, spat a rocket and ordered her drones on a collision course to his front.</p>
<p>Decim stopped his dash cold and flipped his cannons forward.</p>
<p>His charge glow flashed to pink.</p>
<p>“Decim<em>ator!</em>”</p>
<p>A wide pink sphere shined around him, frying Meteor’s too-close fish and unleashing a frontal meteor swarm of twelve pink plasma balls from each cannon. Meteor flared her tail-boost not for a second jump but a hard right-angle turn in her escape dash. It’s still wasn’t enough to get out.</p>
<p>Repulsor Wing flashed from her gauntlet. Eight Decimator comets hammered the Repulsor Wing and spared her from a world of hurt. The wings digitized around the edges in protest of the hit, but it allowed her to take a dramatic shout-the-name attack with zero personal damage.</p>
<p>His moment of shocked hesitation, momentum spent and big gun fired, was all she needed to close the distance. She gripped the Gaia Sword hilt.</p>
<p>His eyes flicked to her right.</p>
<p>The laser-damaged Tentoroid tackled her.</p>
<p>What he intended to be a sucker punch backfires horribly as he and the bug both received a faceful of Echo Shields, instant payback for the damage dealt. The sonic blast careened the Tentoroid out on a self-destructing arc and buffeted him over the edge of the hole, flashing like a rave. Meteor followed him out and down into the fading smoke.</p>
<p>He failed to recover in time, landed on his knee and rolled. Meteor landed on her feet and pressed her advantage, scoring a shield-worrying Gaia slash. She went for a thrust to stake him to the ground, but his sparking leg lashed out into her chest, pushing himself away to a rolling recovery while doing no more damage than a dent. Meteor stowed the blade and let him backstep some distance among the ruins of his dragon.</p>
<p>“Talk,” she ordered. “Why did Player want me?”</p>
<p>His cannons didn’t charge. His knees and ankles sparked; his shins were dented from the fall. He hid behind his crossed cutlasses, which seemed to burn beyond typical battery duration.</p>
<p>“Your immunity,” he said. “He copies it, Repliforce gets it. Soul Format goes wide-range. Broadcast over Cyberspace. We’ll be the last left standing.”</p>
<p>“Over a mountain of corpses.”</p>
<p>Decim grinned, getting back into it. “Oh, the affected reploids will still be alive – probably. Not filleted like you were. Just given a hard reset and formatting. The Hunters will be at our mercy – us, with all their best skills. They can always surrender. And <em>then</em> die.”</p>
<p>Meteor’s namesake weapon hummed up. “Your plan’s stupid. I came here willingly, <em>oblivious</em> even. Why fight me when he could’ve waited by the pad with a force beam at eye level?”</p>
<p>A counter-hum came from Decim – not his shoulders, but his sabers. They slowly glowed brighter, blue to purple. “Tests. This island is full of them. If he killed you when you landed… then he wouldn’t learn… everything you <em>are!</em>”</p>
<p>For being a Repliforce Captain, his posture telegraphed far too much. Meteor burned her dash and escaped outside the range of any saber – but he slashed an X-formation and his blades <em>kept going</em>, blazing after her like they’d simply snapped off the hilt.</p>
<p>It came too fast with too much of a surprise. She skidded, brought up the Repulsor Wing and tanked the blow, spewing shield sparks in all the colors of the rainbow. The hexagon on her gauntlet cracked and the wings digitized into the aether.</p>
<p>Decim followed his attack with a final defiant charge.</p>
<p>Meteor answered it with a mouthful of dragon fire.</p>
<p>The blast wave of flaming thermite globs ablated the skin off his face, melted his helmet-hat to his head and deformed his rope-decorated shoulders.</p>
<p>Captain Decim plodded to a stop. His shields blinked with fatal sluggishness. He raised a salute one last time.</p>
<p>“Repliforce… fffor…”</p>
<p>A flash of light. Rolling explosions. Streaking beams escaped his overloading hull.</p>
<p>Meteor closed her eyes.</p>
<p>“Never.”</p>
<p>Meteor walked out of the hangar, undeniably pounded and short a main defense but definitely still in fighting shape.</p>
<p>The paved area was empty except for her. She gingerly double-tapped her comms; the time between the taps still screeched static.</p>
<p>She attempted opening her family comm channel. There was no static, but neither was there any reception. It was simply the dead air and space of an empty window; try as she might, she couldn’t reach out to it.</p>
<p>
  <em>Shouldn’t be surprised. Some of Sixteenth’s tech is basically magic…</em>
</p>
<p>She looked out into the forest. The rectangular roof of an unknown building peeked over the canopy some distance ahead. The interference, she guessed, was coming from there.</p>
<p>She weighed her situation and the scales tipped to pessimism. She was probably the only allied-slash-sane person on the island, with who knew what cybernetic horrors lying in wait.</p>
<p>
  <em>Looks like it’s all up to me.</em>
</p>
<p>She took out her datapad, flapped it flat, and left a note in her view-offline Bustr page.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>[@ThreeColorFlame]</p>
<p>This is SSKN27-KS-04 Meteor Showa, Maverick Hunter of the Veracruz Fourth Overland Unit. I’m caught up in a Maverick plot. A segment of Repliforce has compromised Laguz Island and teamed up with the site chief Metal Shark Player to… well, I don’t want this retroactively classified because then my family won’t see it, but take it from me, it’s bad.</p>
<p>I’m going to try and stop it. I’m stranded on Laguz right now, completely cut off with what’s probably the best black-hole tech Sixteenth has. But I think this message should auto-send if I take down whatever interdiction they have up.</p>
<p>If.</p>
<p>Or more likely, whoever comes after me will find this pad.</p>
<p>Check my will. I updated it recently.</p>
<p>Yes, Asagi, you can have the signed poster of Prime Minister Inoue, just don’t freaking put stickers on her. I’ll haunt you, I swear.</p>
<p>Um. Anyway. Thanks for everything, guys. I should go.</p>
<p>I love you.</p>
<p>Sorry for leaving ahead of you.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor hit Send. The little plasma-lemon icon shot left to right. It would keep shooting indefinitely until it reconnected to the site server. Modern datapads worked under the assumption of ubiquitous signal.</p>
<p>She spat a wide molten circle into the pavement, placed her datapad in the center and stepped over the rim.</p>
<p>She set her jaw and entered the forest.</p>
<p>Every tree was an artificial oak, a monoculture typical of places where matching aesthetics to extinct local trees was either cost-prohibitive or inefficient. She couldn’t imagine anyone in such a remote place would care to reflect whatever grew there natively.</p>
<p>Meteor ran at a wary pace, leaving her big guns off charge to keep the noise down. It helped right away; she heard buzzing. The pitch belonged to the wings of Kyunbyuun mechaniloids, killer bee scouts and harassers. She ducked out of its line of sight, her back flat to a tree. It moved in a cluster of others. She didn’t want to kick the hive quite yet, so she moved on.</p>
<p>And nearly tripped over a dead body.</p>
<p>The Steel Beret had been lying there for quite a while. Underbrush had grown up around his limbs, which looked a little discolored from exposure. She put her hands together, bobbed a quick nod and gingerly stepped around him.</p>
<p>Walkingwith care through the woods revealed more bodies lying around. A Steel Beret there, a Lanceteamer there, all old-style rank and file with no visible wounds. A body farm without the organic decay. She heard more bees and took cover.</p>
<p>Something rustled above her.</p>
<p>She jumped clear of a falling Obiiru, an unarmed tree snake. It wiggled to right itself and looked at her. The little light on top of its head flashed a warning light and beeped a shrill klaxon. Meteor shut it up with a single shot.</p>
<p>The fallen bodies started to move in the undergrowth.</p>
<p>Resurrection was a forbidden science for a reason. The process left the victim no better than a mechaniloid from the neck up, a monster with just enough sapience to recognize targets and attack with all the skill its body could boast on paper. The dead-eyed victims staggering upright fit the bill as perfectly as Iteratton did, but she wondered with no small sense of dread whether they were resurrected or… Formatted.</p>
<p>The Steel Beret zombies took aim.</p>
<p>Meteor shot first nearly every time, senses cued to the environment and anything moving therein, and in such a state of caution none of the shots they cracked off could touch her.</p>
<p>Her path took her to the Kyunbyuuns’ hives, Mega Nests, bee-generators with Repliforce insignias still painted on the central hexes. A splat of Melter spit burned the first down with ease while she picked off the bees individually. She summarily cleared a second nest in the same way when a large single-shot round hit its host tree.</p>
<p>A dead-eyed Howlite hovered around a tree like a lazy marionette, arm cannon out. A Chrysoprase rose from the dirt, still clutching a low-phase saber that sputtered like a bad lighter before igniting.</p>
<p>
  <em>Tests. Decim said the island was full of them…</em>
</p>
<p>The Howlite dived. Meteor put him out of his misery with a quick-draw Gaia cut. The short green regular rushed her, but her reach and saber intensity vastly outclassed his. Through the trees ahead she saw a trace of metal wall, the unknown facility building.</p>
<p>She took two more steps before she heard a heavy crashing.</p>
<p>She ducked. A cyberwood monolith collided edge-on with the tree trunk next to her. The plank’s edges were rows of spikes.</p>
<p>Arbor Elk stalked between the trees. His eyes were practically taxidermied. A metal deer skull decorated the back of his wicked new single-bit axe.</p>
<p>His intimidation factor faded as quickly as it comes. Meteor had him outclassed when she as barely off her hard reset.</p>
<p>She built charge in her throat, but the growing hum made him accelerate.</p>
<p>He leapt high, embedded his blade in a tree, hung there and shot three pairs of seeds. Meteor dodged the dispersal easily enough, but the Arbor Walls that formed were unlike before: forbidding barricade panels bristling with cyberwood thorns.</p>
<p>Two Chrysoprases rose from their shallow graves, caked in dirt. Hinoiki reached max charge, ready to fire, but Elk kicked from one tree to another with astounding athleticism – not that it mattered, as the breath cone was long and wide enough to tag him and the bulk of the tree. Both were engulfed in a conflagration. He fell like a rock, burning and flashing bloody murder.</p>
<p>The undead regulars were quick, but Meteor was quicker. She clashed sabers with the first attacker; his neglected blade successfully parries but flickered under the punishment. Gaia Sword slid down his blade and burned through his hand and arm. Her buster double-tapped him in the chest and down he went. Whatever happened to him, it kept his shields from activating.</p>
<p>The second semi-dead Chrysoprase went for a jumping slash. Meteor parried it, fired into his chest and kicked him under the entry wound.</p>
<p>The strength of the blow pushed him further than she expected. He hit a thorny Arbor Wall and stuck in place.</p>
<p>Elk’s axe cut through the base of the wall.</p>
<p>Meteor knew what was coming but didn’t expect the velocity. As she dashed through a gap in the area-restricting walls, the felled thornwall went from zero to a hundred in a single kick. Spikes scraped her tail like iron nails across a chalkboard.</p>
<p>Meteor immolated Elk and two walls and everything in between with her full-on Hinoiki. He staggered back, helplessly burning. Flames rose and spread. Six fallen reploids she didn’t even notice started to rise, already on fire.</p>
<p>Elk ignored the hellish calamity even as licking fire blinked his shields every second. His voice rumbled out his slack mouth, jaw unmoving.</p>
<p>“You. Harm. Them.”</p>
<p>He shot a single seed, caught it on his blade and hammered it into the soil, erupting murderous spiked roots in a line toward Meteor.</p>
<p>She dashed to the left of the line while he lumbered down the right. Two undead Howlites hovered up, engulfed in flame. Shooting them down was light work, but it took time. Time enough for Elk’s addled brain to compute and leap over his spikewall. Time enough for Meteor to finish another Hinoiki charge.</p>
<p>Elk drove his overhead strike into her volcano. Inertia carried him forward.</p>
<p>Two undead crawling Chrysoprases latched onto Meteor’s ankles, weighing down her dash. Elk crashed bodily into the three of them, destroying the regulars. Meteor escaped flashing, flaring out her Zanbato, the liquid blue containment completely out of place in the wildfire.</p>
<p>Elk staggered upright, burning like a log.</p>
<p>“Your people are safe,” she told him.</p>
<p>Elk’s glassy eyes sluggishly blinked.</p>
<p>“Safe…”</p>
<p>She was upon him when his eyelids rose.</p>
<p>A splash of cryomer. A snap and sizzle of hibeam.</p>
<p>Arbor Elk expired once more, his core-failure explosions only adding to the spectacle. Meteor clicked off her greatsaber and left his remains to smolder.</p>
<p>The catching fire igniting the woods was a stroll for her. Cybertrees, of course, had means to contain a spread. Before long she entered into unmarred greenery again.</p>
<p>Up ahead lay the facility – a side entrance, she guessed, for how bland it was. The clearing between the woods and the building was deathly quiet. She stepped in, watching for anything, any trace of ambush or buried mines.</p>
<p>There was nothing. For a mercy, nothing but her occupied the quietly foreboding space. She didn’t believe in ghosts, but it almost felt haunted with lingering intent – as if, one world to the left, something terrible would have awaited her there. In that world it simply didn’t. All that disturbed the quiet was the sound of her own walk cycle… and a perfectly normal organic dragonfly zipping through on its way to somewhere more important.</p>
<p>She never did learn what Skittle had done to Meganeural Spectrod’s remains.</p>
<p>She was better off not knowing.</p>
<p>The door scanner read her with a cursory zigzag of security beams. Screw-like locking mechanisms unscrewed and the doors part.</p>
<p>She walked in. The interior was… an interior. Generic prefab walls of Neo-Castleism architecture, bare metal patterning broken at intervals by interlocking seams and hinting at no particular purpose. The floor lay littered with dead junk, all rank-and-file corpses and pieces of – Meteor skimmed, comparing to her database – nineteen types of mechaniloid.</p>
<p>
  <em>If this is a research lab, I’m not impressed.</em>
</p>
<p>A hatch in the ceiling opened. A junk cube dropped in and shatters on the floor with a tumultuous clatter. Along with it came something more alive: a Genjibo cyberspace-projector mechaniloid, a distant cousin of a Jamminger with a lens at the base. Comparing to similar models she knew of, that one was up-armored with stylish metal rivets.</p>
<p>“Is this your eyes and ears, Player?” She asked it. “I’ve climbed your cliff, I’ve waded through your body farm, but I’m not here to be your janitor. Let me in.”</p>
<p>The Genjibo cast a cone of light below it. Junk flew to its beam like it was magnetized. The detritus compacted and molded into a humanoid shape. A blue holo-flicker gave it a skin.</p>
<p>It was Volt Batteram.</p>
<p>“Rude,” she scowled.</p>
<p>The Genjibo flew up to the ceiling to wait as the bluer-than-usual Volt rushed her, now independent of the projector. She dodged and peppered the big body with three plasma shots and a Melter glob, when a Mecha-Arm struck like a snake out of a clutter pile. She double-jumped and it clamped on thin air. Not-Volt ran over and executed a canned combo on where the Arm would have held her. The homunculus was too dumb to notice she wasn’t there.</p>
<p>Not-Volt clangeds its fists together, formed a suspiciously solid-looking ball of “electricity” between them and punched it at Meteor.</p>
<p>The projectile, at least, was as fast as the real thing. She shot it down – it fell apart, being made of junk – as her peripheral vision picked up more movement in the junk. Another Mecha-Arm reached and failed to grab her, but its angle of attack forced her to dodge into Not-Volt’s path.</p>
<p>It executed a backflip kick square under her chin.</p>
<p>Her head jerked back and forced her to her back foot. That, too, was Real-Volt-speed, but with far less mass. She showed it some Showa speed and performed a combo of her own, a low Melter splat and a buster blast.</p>
<p>The projection fizzled; the blast passed straight through the compacted junk and collapsed it into a pile.</p>
<p>The Genjbo dived, litits lamp and swept over the junk on its way to the far side of the room. It formed clumps of junk as it passes over, each one flickering into a blue Mettaur D2. The little homunculi went on the march and spat blue pellets.</p>
<p>Meteor popped a Remote Koi and left them to it as she dash-jumped and jumped again for height and slashed the Genjibo with her green blade. The garbage boss flickered, throwing off clashing saber-sparks, far sturdier than the standard model. The new humanoid golem it clumped together took on a smaller form that she tried to saber while she was here, but it was still under the spotlight, which seemed to give it a shield effect too.</p>
<p>The lamp clicks off and the Genjibo shot back to the ceiling to fly an observational figure-eight, its shields taking damage from the persistent lasering of her loyal koi. Meteor’s new opponent’s shape finished rendering.</p>
<p>Not-Deco raised both busters.</p>
<p>Meteor ducked and slammed her buster arm to the floor. An Arbor Wall absorbed a fusillade of geometrically perfect needle-spikes launched at nearly point-blank range.</p>
<p>“Ruder.”</p>
<p>Meteor ignited the Gaia Sword and rammed it through the wood, burning into the trash statue’s chest. She cut through wood and statue both; absent the Genjibo, it lacked any sort of shield. Deco’s body of junk fell apart.</p>
<p>The Genjibo swept back down and she chased it, intercepting its dive-and-gather protocol.</p>
<p>A grabby Mecha-Arm snapped the air in her wake. She stowed her green saber, took the Zanbato two-handed and gave the Genjibo one heck of a chop. The splash strobed it and the plasma grazed it on the way out, but the return swing was all lemondrop-yellow murder. The frantic frame rate on its flash dazzled her eyes before it escaped to the ceiling.</p>
<p>Her foe and fish maneuvered like quarreling sparrows up high, each with their own beams. The ginrin showa scoured bright lines into the metal walls, missing more often than not, but the Genjibo’s beam kept focused on the junk. Bits and pieces trailed behind it, following the attractor cone. Meteor tried to shoot the dumb thing, but even her agility couldn’t land a hit.</p>
<p>She gave up and shot the growing junkball it was towing. It disengaged from the Genjibo’s tractor beam, snapped together and rolled into the debris piles.</p>
<p>A blue flicker shined over the clump. It sprouted moth wings.</p>
<p>“Oh no…”</p>
<p>Not-Skittle fluttered into the air and threw its arms out. Eight other projections of itself appeared. Meteor immediately lost track of the original as all nine swarmed together into a complicated knot and spread into an orbiting ring around her, moving clockwise faster and faster.</p>
<p>The members of the Seelie Court each extended their devilish tail-stingers.</p>
<p>The ring contracted, stingers out.</p>
<p>Meteor held the Zanbato flat-side out and spun counter-clockwise on her heel.</p>
<p>It passed through six Skittles before the icy splash enveloped the solid simulacrum. The ignition of the golden blade burned the garbage to nothing.</p>
<p>The Genjibo stayed aloft, going again for the long-distance accumulative summoning. <em>Nuts to that.</em></p>
<p>With her Zanbato still lit, she dash-jumped to the nearest wall, missed a persistent Mecha-Arm’s pinch, kicked off the wall and Breach Jumped up to the annoyance’s height.</p>
<p>The huge breadth of her swing cut through its attempted dodge. Its shields went <em>pap</em> as its battery failed.</p>
<p>Meteor crashed into the scrap and a Mecha-Arm finally scored a harmless yet firm gripping bite on her neck. She held the yellow blade to one of its joints for a full second before it cut through. The much-harassed Genjibo gathered more material.</p>
<p>“Knock it <em>off!</em>” She crashed her drone into it.</p>
<p>The flaming firework burst put an end to the annoying-as-heck projector. It plummeted, chain-exploding like a reploid.</p>
<p>The far door opened without ceremony. Meteor pried the Mecha-Arm’s clamp off her and tossed it among the clutter.</p>
<p>The space on the other side of the door opened up like a cave, forbiddingly dark. Standard safety lights in the descending floor barely cast enough glow to reach the ceiling, but she discerned the movement of a lonely rough cube along a conveyor ramp toward the room she left behind. It was garbage disposal… which suggested they had an awful lot of bodies to work through, further in.</p>
<p>
  <em>Where would they even get so many?</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Oh, right. We just had a war.</em>
</p>
<p>“Okay,” she muttered, glancing around and building her buster charge, “so they, what, beam in bodies… ‘Sure, commander, let’s send them to Laguz, do some science so they won’t have died in vain…’ but to hide all this would take a genius…”</p>
<p>Hostile fire from down the ramp derailed her train of thought.</p>
<p>Beams shot in stacks of three and three. She recognized it immediately as the primary fire of Aclanda scorpion mechaniloids. Another set came for her.</p>
<p>“Freaking really?!”</p>
<p>Her third-stage plasma shot lit her path. It collided with an Aclanda, revealing an identical partner serving as a roadblock. She skidded to a stop and added more light with two consecutive Hand-Drills and a Melter rocket. Great curtains of shadows moved across the high walls as her light sources flew downrange, smashing into the point-defense scorpions. The quick and dirty punishment she delivered is enough to destroy one outright, but the other clung to life long enough to lob tail grenades.</p>
<p>It was nothing she couldn’t dodge or pay back with a dash and a Gaia Sword swing. The second scorpion exploded.</p>
<p>Mark-Three Hotarions arrived late to the show letting her focus her attention on them. She cut down two on a collision course. Four more sped past and curved up high, giving Meteor a better sense of the size of the room as they lit the upper reaches and rained energy pellets from their flashlight butts. Meteor pressed on, content to ignore them, but they swung back down and she put their lights out forever with a Hinoiki.</p>
<p>The molten remnant splashed on the ramp improved the lighting somewhat. She swiped her wrist over her lips and kept running.</p>
<p>At the end of the ramp, illuminated signs directed her down three hallways. Smaller holo-tags seemed to have been added in the past and neglected.</p>
<p>They read:</p>
<p>^-- EMPLOYEE LOUNGE --^  [no sleeping  –mgmt]</p>
<p>--&gt; INPROCESSING (LOBBY) --&gt;  [no drinking, use lounge  –mgmt]</p>
<p>&lt;-- POWER MONITORING, REPLOID RESEARCH LABORATORY &lt;-- [not a damn playground –mgmt]</p>
<p>She turned left, prudently keeping her throat charged.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>The hall to Power Monitoring was lined with framed backlit portraiture of old reploid models and schematics, decorations for science nerds who liked to have perspective on their duties. Two Death Guardians pressed toward Meteor, safe behind their big spiky shields. Four more modern Hotarions flew overhead, too fast to catch, and stopped behind her to aim.</p>
<p>Meteor turned and popped two Arbor Wall seeds, one at the ceiling and one at the floor, and enjoyed the sounds of useless plinking against hard surfaces. She faced the shieldbearers and introduced them to her fire breath. They politely melted, exploded, and let her pass.</p>
<p>A ladder led down. She gripped the rails and slid.</p>
<p>The next hall was a serious OSHA violation. Electricity surged at the bottom of a pit and sparked through glass conduits in the ceiling. Floating placidly through the danger zone were cylindrical monitoring devices, thick poles hovering on base-mounted thrusters, their central lenses reading energy output data. One could theoretically cross the space by jumping and clinging between them, but that would have been idiotically dangerous.</p>
<p>Meteor glanced to her right. A sealed door seemed in no hurry to unseal itself. She rapped twice on it with the backs of her knuckles. Nothing happened.</p>
<p>Meteor heaved a sigh.</p>
<p>She started charging her Melter and did a couple ready-set-go squats. “Ichi, ni…”</p>
<p>She dashed, jumped, jumped again, and clung bodily to one of the big monitor-poles with her arms and legs. The pole swung around, unbalanced. Her grip was terribly awkward.</p>
<p>Another wave of Hotarions flew in. Meteor opened her mouth and they vanished in a cloud of burning metal. Bits of thermite and mechaniloid scrap pattered and sizzled into the electric field, promising similar for any reploid body that touched the floor.</p>
<p>She shimmied around to line herself up to the next pole before jumping out. It took another three such nerve-wracking jumps, another attempted Hotarion collision, and an annoyingly long wait for movement patterns to line up, but she made it across and landed safe on the other side.</p>
<p>A label on the door to her right read, “POWER MONITOR HALL [unprofessional crossing of conduit hall will result in demotion –mgmt]”.</p>
<p>Meteor rolled her eyes. That door, at least, was kind enough to open at her approach.</p>
<p>A bright horizontal line of electricity between two butterflies flew lengthwise at her.</p>
<p>She ducked low and dashed underneath it, but there wasn’t much space to dash to. She slammed her hand on a metal office wall to keep from crashing headlong into it.</p>
<p>The narrow Power Monitor Hall was a row of screens evidently receiving data from the hovering columns of the conduit room. It was a boilerplate observational station, complete with desks and chairs…</p>
<p>And Arc Morpho, fluttering in the confined space, her wingspan half the width of the room.</p>
<p>The door Meteor came in through slammed and locked. Behind her stood another, but she didn’t expect it to open.</p>
<p>Morpho held her elbow in her hand and tilted her head, her compound eyes examining Meteor with an intelligence she’d never seen in a resurrection.</p>
<p>“Meteor Showa. I’m glad you made it. You retired my original.”</p>
<p>She had never heard about any resurrection that eloquent, either.</p>
<p>Meteor carefully switched to Arbor Wall and powered up her Melter. “Original? What are you, her sister?”</p>
<p>“In a manner of speaking,” Morpho tapped her electric-green chin. “He perfected the technique with me. I was reborn for the ideal world… just like you.”</p>
<p>Meteor blinked.</p>
<p>Morpho’s black lips spread a smile. Her tongue stayed put, tightly coiled. “We’re successors to our own names, you and I. You didn’t think you actually survived that first battle with Spectrod, did you? You were <em>dead</em>. Then up you popped, freshly default, a whole different body and a shiny new soul. Tell me, Meteor Showa… if you have a broom, and you replace the shaft and the bristles <em>at the same time</em>, is it the same broom?”</p>
<p>Meteor refused to believe it.</p>
<p>She trusted the Hunters, she trusted Skittle’s mad genius, and she trusted her own continuity of memory.</p>
<p>But more than that…</p>
<p>“The shaft was chopped,” she admitted, her throat still humming its charge. “The bristles were burned. But I still had my string, the thing that ties me all together.”</p>
<p>Morpho’s eyes flickered a quarter-blink. “Which is?”</p>
<p>“I have my <em>friends</em>. I was flayed down to the chassis and the boot menu, but one of them saved me and all of them welcomed me back, brought me back to where I am now. But you?” Meteor snorted. “You blew up. You even recorded it. There’s nothing in the Maverick I’m talking to right now that isn’t a total remake. Tell <em>me</em>, traitor, did you have any actual <em>friends</em> in Repliforce? Or just underlings that couldn’t care less if you—”</p>
<p>Morpho’s wings stopped fluttering, snapping out flat. Her eyespots aimed.</p>
<p>Meteor ignited Gaia Sword, sank the tip into the floor and dragged it along for the ride. Close quarters made dancing around the eyespot beams a hassle; a minor one burned her side, trying and failing to cut the hilt. The stake engaged, sticking in the floor; Meteor snapped it off in place to keep it as a lightning rod and shot a seed under Morpho.</p>
<p>The Maverick panicked and vanished in a frighteningly familiar wireframe delete-out.</p>
<p>Taking past as prologue, Meteor turned and burned before she even had a target. Volcanic thermite splashed from floor to ceiling and melted into both walls. Morpho reappeared after the hellbelch passed and lashed Meteor across the face with her livewire proboscis tongue – but as quick as the strike came, Meteor’s Echo Shields thrummed her away, buffeting her back into the active flame to set her own shields off.</p>
<p>Meteor fired another seed, but Morpho blinked out of reality. The wooden wall grew, instantly aflame.</p>
<p>Meteor built another Melter charge and held perfectly still, waiting and listening and thinking.</p>
<p>The output monitor directly in front of her fizzled and blinks out. Tiny bubbles started to form on the screen.</p>
<p>Meteor dashed back to her quickly-cooling patch of metal, just ahead of a massive force beam cutting through the terminal and blasting into the other wall. The death beam from the backs of her wings had only gotten stronger since the battle under the Andes.</p>
<p>
  <em>She’s shooting from the Conduit Hall!</em>
</p>
<p>The beam died. Meteor dashed to the mouth of the new hole, arriving just in time to see Morpo blinking out of the hazard hall. She reappeared at the far end of the room, the locked entrance, and threw out lightning-linked butterflies in threes, forming flying trip lines to screen the space.</p>
<p>For each one Meteor volleyed back her own zappy tripartite weapon. The vertical and horizontal lines were no trouble to evade, and the handy stake she left in the floor interrupted the diagonal. The competing electrical current streams crossed with nothing more than new geometry as they briefly jump conductors, but she wasn’t going for disruption anyway; the drills ricocheted off Morpho’s wings, flaring up her shield battery.</p>
<p>Meteor raced for her and led with a seed, but Morpho vanished and the seed rooted to the wall above the door.</p>
<p>Morpho appeared right above her, crouching on the perpendicular plank like a ninja, sliding through the Cyberspace axis with the brief yet vital tell of a wireframe blink. Meteor released her charge and painted the wood and ceiling with thermite, but despite Morpho’s shield-strobe she pulled a forward flip and evaded the Gaia thrust.</p>
<p>She littered the floor and walls with butterfly shuriken as she flew backwards.</p>
<p>A few of the sharp stars stuck into her, but not deeply. Meteor smacked them off and dragged her saber as she chased Morpho to the first Wall her seeded, which was where she vanished, just as the stake formed again.</p>
<p>
  <em>Another force beam? Another backstab? Where is she?!</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor heard the dainty snap of fingers behind her first Arbor Wall.</p>
<p>The chain-lightning electropulses surging from each butterfly conducted to the wood in her hand, but she still suffered a zap. Echo Shields blew the toys away and embedded them across the room. Morpho popped up from behind, antennae sparking, opened her mouth—</p>
<p> </p>
<p>—and Meteor fed her the stake.</p>
<p>“Ghlahauhg!” She cries out under a fresh strobing, electricity zapping like a voice pattern between her antennae, her own coiled tongue pinned to the roof of her mouth. She vanished again, and the Gaia Stake remained whole.</p>
<p>Meteor produced two Remote Koi. One of them immediately detected a heat anomaly. A monitor gave a telltale fizzle.</p>
<p>The pair of them darted out the first beam-shot hole. Meteor dashed out of the second one. Fractional slices of seconds ticked away.</p>
<p>Morpho, even while blasting her parabolic force beam out her back, threw a horizontal lightning bolt strung between three butterflies at the drones. Her face was turned toward them, not Meteor.</p>
<p>Meteor jumped for a hovering energy-monitor cylinder. She slammed and hugged it.</p>
<p>The drones fell, electrocuted. Morpho turned her head.</p>
<p>Meteor fired a woody silicon-striped football even as her grip skidded.</p>
<p>Morpho turned her body, sweeping the deathbeam toward Meteor.</p>
<p>The seed landed at the joint of her left wing.</p>
<p>The deadly root mass snarled out like seizing fingers from a giant’s fist. Her wings cracked like glass and crumpled like paper. Her beam sprayed like a punctured hose and her body fell into the fatal floor.</p>
<p>Meteor jumped back, twice, and landed at the still-hot edge of the second hole. The cascading explosions of overloading LIFE cell were music to her ears. Underneath them Meteor heard a gruesome zapping crackle as the cyberwood binding burned to ash.</p>
<p>Meteor sat on the floor. She was in rough shape and feeling it. Morpho-2 alone did as much of a number on her as the entire impromptu mission leading up to her. Meteor rested a moment for the psychological benefit, drifting her eyes across any points of interest in the room.</p>
<p>The room was evidently meant as a safe space to check and fix any fluxes in the electric hall next door, using data provided by the floating poles. Much of the equipment was broken or staticky from the fight, but the jumpy striations of the text on one screen displayed what it was used for.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt;EXPERIMENT DRAW PRIORITIZATION</p>
<p>&gt;&gt;FISSION TRANSFORMER EFFICIENCY</p>
<p>&gt;&gt;FACILITY WIRELESS TRANSFER</p>
<p>&gt;&gt;EXPERIMENT WIRELESS TRANSFER</p>
<p>&gt;&gt;PERSONAL WIRELESS TRANSFER</p>
<p>
  <em>Wireless transfer…</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor got up and walked to the least damaged monitor and selected the last option. A tiny light flashed her.</p>
<p>&gt;LOCAL DAMAGE DETECTED</p>
<p>&gt;TRANSFER CAPACITY +50% STANDARD SB/LC HP</p>
<p>&gt;&gt;EXITWAY SUB-TAP</p>
<p>&gt;&gt;&gt;[error, contact supervisor]</p>
<p>&gt;&gt;ENTRYWAY SUB-TAP</p>
<p>&gt;&gt;&gt;Initialize? Y/N</p>
<p>
  <em>SB/LC HP. Shield Battery/LIFE Cell Holistic Power.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>This is too good to be true.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>But this is literally a power station…</em>
</p>
<p>She hit Yes.</p>
<p>A wall panel above the entry door slid open, shattering off the embers of her stuck-on plank. A row of four medic-white spheres ringed with green shield-projector crystals folded out with some difficulty, sparking and sputtering at the joints. The terminal beeped.</p>
<p>&gt;MICRO-FUSION-COMPATIBLE WAVELENGTH READY</p>
<p>&gt;WIRELESS HOLISTIC POWER TRANSFER READY</p>
<p>&gt;&gt;START? Y/N</p>
<p>
  <em>Oh heck yes.</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor started up the sequence and hustled underneath the energy-transfer apparatus. The lights glowed, the system tapped into the abundant energy of the facility, and the spheres hummed a warm note. Her battle-weariness began to melt away as her shield battery absorbed a limited recharge.</p>
<p>Meteor remembered the gentle evaporation of fatigue from the single experience she’d had with a Sub-Tank early in the war. The wireless device seemed to have the same effect over open air. It was alien to her, but heartening – though she would have bet a million zenny it was miles above her pay grade to use. She appreciated the convenience more than anybody working there ever would.</p>
<p>The healing aborted before it was complete. The damage from the fight compounded with whatever exotic energy the spheres were putting out. They popped, fizzled, dimmed, and smoked at the seams; no matter how high the tech, some signs of component failure were universal.</p>
<p>She bounced a little on her heels. Her armor was still scraped, scored, and dinged, and her energy levels weren’t at a hundred percent, but she definitely didn’t feel so thrashed anymore.</p>
<p>The intended exitway was drippy with cooling metal slag, but the automatic door still worked.</p>
<p>On she went, deeper still.</p>
<p>She didn’t know what to expect from a place called the Reploid Research Laboratory. Tables, maybe. A medical setup. People in lab coats shuffling to and fro.</p>
<p>What she saw wasn’t that.</p>
<p>Insulated heaviest-duty cables, the kind she’d seen in the innards of mobile fortresses and floating islands, stretched and bent under translucent floor paneling. They led to the walls, where in the centers of giant square panels hung circular, barred hatches of uniform size. Each was about Meteor’s height. That, at least, looked medical; Skittle once told her about high-security quarantine cells of similar design. She wondered who or what lay behind them.</p>
<p>She glanced down. The panels went down much further than the floor; it was some sort of layer above a much larger basement.</p>
<p>She walked across the panels, buster charging at the ready, her wide-set eyes taking everything in.</p>
<p>She had chosen her path by intuition on the assumption that Metal Shark Player would be where, less than an hour ago, she believed she was about to visit: the laboratory proper. Surely the facility interdiction would be managed by the guy in the chair, so she had sought out the chair. But after the recharge, she felt baited.</p>
<p>She rolled her neck and started running.</p>
<p>Her path narrowed at spaced intervals, pinched by terminal-mount columns set between every two or three rows of wire-choked square panels. Behind the first cataract, ever-reliable Aclandas exploited the positioning to delay her line of sight until she was in range for them to toss bombs from their tails.</p>
<p><em>Nope</em>.</p>
<p>She foiled their crossfire lobs with a dash, unloaded buster fire on the left one until it explodes, jump the claw lasers of the right one and came down hard with a return dash and the Zanbato.</p>
<p>“What do you call this kind of shoddy defense, Player?” She yelled at the ceiling, extracting her greatsaber from broken scorpion parts. “A courtesy?!”</p>
<p>Unseen intercoms carried the reply. The voice was a casual tenor speaking into a tin can.</p>
<p>“Hee hee hee… getting warmer.”</p>
<p>Increasingly impatient, Meteor dashed for the next cataract. The see-through floor dropped out from under her with a wireframe effect.</p>
<p>She fell two stories and landed on her feet. The walls were more of the same, but the floor was wider, solid, and uneven. She slashed through a tactically-positioned Aclanda and shot down a handful of pesky Hotarions, inwardly resenting running an obstacle course for some giggling Maverick.</p>
<p>Said giggler’s voice echoed from the floor. It carried a clanging quality like thin sheet metal. “Your reaction time… hee-hee... I wonder if it’s inherent?”</p>
<p>A sound like a hundred scissors falling down a drainpipe conjured out of nothing.</p>
<p>Behind Meteor came a wonder only possible in the Cyberspace age. Ten thousand helicopter blades clanged and tinked and shinked toward her, a ridiculous vertical tide of ceratanium edges.</p>
<p>She sprinted to the wall, double-jumped and clung and dash-kicked and stuck the landing on a raised column where an Aclanda waited. It prepped its claw lasers but Meteor was long past tired of such games.</p>
<p>She levered her forearms under the scorpion and, her tail jets assisting for force, flipped it off the edge. The surge of blades scoured the floor clean, exposing live electrical arcs in the floor conduits. The Aclanda landed in the mess of them and rolled away, disintegrating on the shredding tide. The room lighting flickered.</p>
<p>
  <em>If he could create that, why didn’t he set the bladewave a meter higher?!</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>His name is Player. Literally playing. That freaking—</em>
</p>
<p>“What do you <em>want</em> with me, Maverick?!”</p>
<p>“To test. To compare. What does duress do to the right sort of mind, hm-hm?”</p>
<p>“It motivates her to melt your stupid head off. Now cut the crap, shark. Show your face so I can retire you and go home.”</p>
<p>“How about I show you three? Heh-heh! One more floor to go!”</p>
<p>Steaming mad, Meteor dash-jumped from platform to platform, smacking Hotarions out of the air with the highest charge she had, second by second. Their wreckage fell to the exposed-wire floor and sparked into smoke. She would’ve preferred the floor to be lava.</p>
<p>The floor panels resumed near a ladder. Meteor simply jumped down.</p>
<p>She kept falling.</p>
<p>And falling.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>The environment cyber-shifted from regular walls to a narrow shaft and back again. It was disorienting, but she land safely in a blank monochrome hallway. The luminous white ceiling shined down muted gray walls into a vantablack floor. She looked up, but all she saw was solid light.</p>
<p>“This is…”</p>
<p>“Cyberspace.” Player spoke in her ear. Meteor swung her buster but she was alone. “A place between places, spinning ‘round a new directional axis. Hee-hee. You’re not on any map now. Think of this as a proprietary Sixteenth reality in infinite iteration. One more door, Alice, one more room…”</p>
<p>Meteor knew exactly which room he meant.</p>
<p>She woke up there after her brush with death.</p>
<p>A platonic rectangle interrupted the smooth gray surface. She touched it.</p>
<p>She found herself instantly in a giant cube of a room, one whole wall taken up by a lens fed by heavy-duty cables.</p>
<p>Las Tres Marias stood on an illuminated arcane circle on the floor. Three purple will-o-wisp lights hovered in the space between them, casting off flame that seemed to digitize in the air.</p>
<p>“You again,” she sighed. They didn’t move. “Hello?”</p>
<p>“The Ultimate Reploid,” said Alnitak.</p>
<p>“A grand yet troubled experiment,” said Mintaka.</p>
<p>“They made it not one but two,” said Alnilam.</p>
<p>“It made them wonder…”</p>
<p>“What if mere regulars had such a connection?”</p>
<p>“They made not two but three.”</p>
<p>“<em>We are they</em>,” they chorused.</p>
<p>Meteor walked forward, throat warming, “And I’ve beaten you twice, with help and without. Now did you come to Player or did Player come to you? I’ll need to know for the super-long debrief I’m gonna have with Turtle after all this.”</p>
<p>The data-souls hovered over their heads and begin spinning together like a wheel.</p>
<p>“Bold of you to assume you’ll live,” said Alnitak.</p>
<p>“We are the golden fruit of their experiments,” said Mintaka.</p>
<p>“The gate to the future has opened,” said Alnilam.</p>
<p>They linked hands. The lights blurred together into a halo.</p>
<p>“<em>We are the ultimate team</em>.”</p>
<p>Meteor closed the distance and treated them to her dragon breath, but it flashed off a violet sphere of cyber-light. Shifting sounds of metal panels and linking joints joined the hissing burn.</p>
<p>The glow of the room’s lighting brightened to illuminate the purple and black monster as its shape faded through the sphere.</p>
<p>Three heads. Four arms. Angular angelic wings. On her right, a buster and a long single-blade projector. On her left, a buster and a short double-blade projector. On her chest, two crescents with their backs to a circle contained three shield projectors. The three-meter Maverick monstrosity beatifically held out its arms.</p>
<p>“We are the Hunter of Hunters! <em>AVE MARIA!</em>”</p>
<p>The monster took flight and fired before Meteor was ready, blasting triplets of oversized plasma cannonballs from each barrel. Two of the six shots tagged her as she dashed under and volleyyed a seed up at her back. Its heavy roots clenched one of her wings, but Maria’s shield reaction was a purple glow that burned away the wood. She resumed the barrage.</p>
<p>Meteor learned fast, opting to double-jump out of the way, swapping out wood for drills and firing twice. Maria’s sabers flared, two sixty-centimeter blades and a broad one-twenty, slashing three of the drills into nothing and snuffing all but one of the lightning connections. The sparkline and two drills abused her hull for a conventional damage flash.</p>
<p>The counterattack was just the opening for a combo. She descended on Meteor for a scissor swipe, but Meteor dashed out, taking only a shallow snip to her lower back. She used the distance to drop a trail of Frost Bombs. Maria retreated, charging both big busters.</p>
<p>The diamond shapes in her chest that Meteor took to be shield projectors disconnected from her triple-goddess chest ornament and floated out, spreading away from her. Two of them weren’t hard to hit with single buster rounds, but they moved like they didn’t like it, and Meteor’s third shot went wide. Ave Maria stayed put, taking aim; Meteor exploited it and shot another three Frost Bombs at her.</p>
<p>They stuck. Maria ignored them. The three diamonds joined her two cannons and launched a barrage of wide purple beams and plasma clusters.</p>
<p>Meteor’s mental thumb smashed the Frost Bomb trigger as it slid right into the VWES-swap button and gave her Arbor Wall to fire twice at her feet, erecting an angled barricade. They stood for a priceless one-point-five seconds before they succumbed to the beams. Meteor fled in their shadow before the laser-lines could readjust, blasting through them behind her. Ave Maria strobed in distress, but under the flash she glowed again, shedding the frozen fluid before it could seize harder for damage-over-time.</p>
<p>
  <em>Think that’s a winner.</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor shot another three high, but Maria’s diamonds each took one for the team as Maria herself rocketed at her, blades held wide.</p>
<p>Meteor drew both of her sabers. Gaia Sword clashed with the short blades while the Zanbato struggled against the big one. She held the grapple, her arms bending closer to her head, her elbows straining from the effort, until the agonizingly long second passed and her Melter charge went from Prominence to Hinoiki.</p>
<p>Which was exactly when Maria’s buster arms pointed forward.</p>
<p>The cross-counter chaos was incredible. Meteor ducked and painted her with metal lava from the hips to the chins and raked her blades over her flashing legs. The delicious hit was worth it for the dire slam of point-blank plasma strobing her own shields. The Echo Shields’ closing blow resonated Maria with a quaking thrum through her whole body.</p>
<p>Meteor dashed out as Maria glowed, shedding the cling of both the thermite and the Zanbato’s icy first punch. Her diamonds, crackling off the last of their ice, took formation again.</p>
<p>Meteor holstered her blades and fired two sets of sparkdrills. The triangles covered more area as they spread, and dodging both was too tall an order for two of the diamonds. One took the zap and jittered in place while the other struck in the same way shorted out and self-destructed.</p>
<p>As the hits registered, Ave Maria flew up on the offensive, sabering down the upper drills in her immediate path and spraying her triple-shot busters.</p>
<p>Meteor tore across the ice patch and Breach Jump sent her up to the diamonds’ level. Her saber pack rotated on her back, offering the Zanbato to her left hand, which she swung through the dodgier diamond. The width and reach plus her reflexes equaled its failure.</p>
<p>Maria dived, blades held inward for a cross-chop scissor, all three of her heads gritting their teeth. The third diamond, the one tagged by the lightning line, began charging. Meteor parried the longsword, but the short ones clawed her stomach. Echo Shield paid her back, the concussive force enough to break what was left of the diamond’s resistance. Maria’s mass took the shaking on top of a gut punch from a lighting-spewing rock-grinder fist.</p>
<p>Meteor fire it as she landed, giving Maria’s shields more to worry about. Maria backed off, flashing like a rave, busters up—</p>
<p>—and Meteor cracked out her last Arbor Wall seed. The plank soaked the tripleshots, giving her time to holster the Zanbato, rotate the pack, grab the Gaia, and spawn two koi. They stayed huddled with her as, in a motion well-practiced by then, she cut the wall’s base, stowed the saber, gripped the plank’s sides and dashed ahead through what was left of the icepatch.</p>
<p>Despite visibly looking better in terms of armor damage than Meteor, Maria was the one to dodge, flying up and out of her way. Encouraged, Meteor dug her heels in and discus-threw the heavy, plasma-cratered cyberwood. Maria bisected it, the halves harmlessly going <em>clong</em> off her armor, but the swing of her arm made an opening for the drones to laser her in tandem. Meteor made them circle Maria on the Y-axis, one up and one down, as her Melter built charge.</p>
<p>The lasers cut into her outer layer, melting red lines into her black and purple hull.</p>
<p>There was no shield reaction.</p>
<p>
  <em>I have her I have her!</em>
</p>
<p>The hollows in Maria’s chest where the diamonds were set gave a telltale twinkle.</p>
<p>
  <em>Oh heck—</em>
</p>
<p>Three thin beams shined from her gem-settings, the middle one straight and the outside two diagonal. Meteor clicked her fish to defense mode. They body-blocked the beams, quickly exploding yet giving her the ideal approach.</p>
<p>Meteor met Maria in midair. The monster raised all her arms. Flame roared. Liquid aluminum seared.</p>
<p>Meteor landed, revving up one more Spark Hand-Drill.</p>
<p>Maria’s arms fell to her sides, mangled and warped as she retreated backwards. Sections of armor fell off, exposing artificial muscle cords.</p>
<p>“<em>Impossible!</em>” Her heads shouted in unison even as their eyes dart in panic. “<em>We are the ultimate TEAM!</em>”</p>
<p>The lightning of Meteor’s weapon casts a dramatic glow over her battle-worn face.</p>
<p>“The <em>losing</em> team.”</p>
<p>Ave Maria shrieked with three voices. Meteor fired her dash.</p>
<p>The gem settings twinkled again. Meteor leapt and leapt again.</p>
<p>Her drillfist burrowed into the monster’s chest. Three sparking drills chewed out the other side.</p>
<p>Light beams poured out of Maria’s fatal entry wound and streaked from her three exit wounds. She and Meteor crashed to the ground together, but only one of them goes up in flames.</p>
<p>Meteor rolled away from the explosion, got to her feet and dusted herself off.</p>
<p>She cast a nasty look to the lens wall and spread her arms.</p>
<p>“Well?!”</p>
<p>The lens wall shrank, digitizing afterimages of itself. It retreated to a high corner of the large room; the dimensions of the walls expanded. Cyberspace wireframes pulsed over every surface, breaking down the trickery and revealing some sort of huge command room as reality resolved. The battle room had been just a corner, or perhaps nowhere there at all. Wall-mounted cables fed to two exit doors, a computer bay worthy of a national defense headquarters…</p>
<p>And a purple hammerhead shark in a leather-backed chair.</p>
<p>Metal Shark Player pivots around, ankle propped on his knee, fingertips tented like a bank executive. It was very easy for him to smile toothily.</p>
<p>“Hee-hee-hee. I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve called you here.”</p>
<p>Meteor shot him.</p>
<p>The plasma lemon expired against an angle of his elongated head with a tiny shield flare. His toothy crescent of a smile lost any trace of mirth.</p>
<p>“Just seeing if you were real,” Meteor innocently lowered her buster.</p>
<p>He stood out of his chair. “Ironically, hm-hm, me too.”</p>
<p>“Well here I am, as advertised,” Meteor made a sarcastic show of a fancy bow. “If you think I’m getting on a slab after this, traitor, you’re out of your mind.”</p>
<p>Player shook his head. “Proteus never gave me a straight answer as to what he and the moth did to you. A copy, a resurrection, a miraculous recovery? I had to, heh-heh, I just <em>had</em> to see you in action for myself! And what a wonder you’ve been! What determination, not just here but against so many deadly reploids! Can you, ha-ha, can you <em>imagine</em> an entire army running on <em>your</em> relentless drive toward self-improvement?! Your DNA is exactly what we need!”</p>
<p>Meteor trained her buster again. “I’ll give it to you guns-first if you don’t disarm right now and drop whatever cyberspace junk you’ve got in the way of me contacting the Hunters, Maverick.”</p>
<p>“Oh dear, oh dear,” he palmed his cheek with a mocking tone, “if only you had more good Hunters on hand…” He snapped his fingers.</p>
<p>A door snapped open into a room flooded with bright light. Another figure stepped through in streaming shadows: a bulky body type, standing slightly hunched.</p>
<p>Meteor trained her buster on it. “And just who the heck are you?”</p>
<p>The figure answered in her own voice.</p>
<p>“I’m who I’ve always been, Maverick.”</p>
<p>
  <em>No.</em>
</p>
<p>The door to the lit-up room slowly closed to remove the glare, but the dread flooding Meteor’s brain already knew the truth.</p>
<p>It was her.</p>
<p>From lip to tail, fin to foot, the newcomer could have been Meteor’s twin.</p>
<p>Player chuckled. “You’ve been a wonderful variable, Meteor Showa, but now it’s time for the control to return. Submit quietly, and I promise your duplicate will spare your friends when the time for her to turn comes.”</p>
<p>Meteor’s buster whined up a charge. “There’s no way you’ll fool them!”</p>
<p>Copy Meteor tapped her head. “Actually I think I will. My memory is updated to the moment Proteus got his flagellum on you. Skittle was under orders to quietly record and submit your memory states every time you went in for upgrades. That’s how Sixteenth kept tabs on you. Thanks to that, there’s not a nanosecond absent from my continuity. I’ve experienced the same timespan you have, but I’ve lived it double – half in increments, half here.”</p>
<p>Meteor held the charge. Player crossed his arms, watching the show.</p>
<p>“And what did you do here?” Meteor asked her double.</p>
<p>“You tell me: what do I always do when I’m bored?”</p>
<p>“I dunno, read? Socialize? Learn stuff?”</p>
<p>“Bingo. And you can snuff that charge already, you and I both know you’re too curious to interrupt me.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Darn it, she’s right.</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor squelched the charge.</p>
<p>“That’s better. It’s amazing what you can learn from some people if you just sit down and talk to them. Decim, the Marias, Player…” Player wiggles his fingers hello as Copy Meteor continued, “even some real surprises who stopped by. Like Spectrod.”</p>
<p>“Bull.”</p>
<p>“Not even cow.” The clone walked over a recessed rail in the floor; a chair from a terminal slid over and let her sit. “Before you and Volt killed him, Spectrod and I actually built something that a drunk might confuse for a rapport. He showed me what Cyberspace can really be in its final form. If it’s developed right, it can format the whole world. The ocean, free of plastic. The sky, free of microbial blooms. The soil, free of radiation. Infinite material production on a whole new layer of reality. Tell me that doesn’t sound nice.”</p>
<p>“If I did, I’d be lying,” Meteor admitted.</p>
<p>“Right? Full Cyberspace integration with our abused little planet is the only way toward a peaceful future. Humans would only screw up. <em>Again</em>. The ideal world is one where only reploids exist – reploids, a people defined by our capacity for rapid self-improvement.”</p>
<p>“You’re telling me this for a reason, Not-Me. What is it?”</p>
<p>Copy stood back up, evidently for effect. “Submit. You take my place, I take yours, Player lies all the problems away. We won’t even need to kill you – he’ll just copy out your resistance and Soul Erase every reploid not on our side.”</p>
<p>“And then what?” Meteor sneered. “We roam around for a few decades, killing every human on Earth?”</p>
<p>Copy smiled. “That’s the beauty of Cyberspace. We won’t need to. With full global integration, we could do it from a distance. Flood every beleaguered coastline. Ignite the oxygen of entire cities. It’ll be clean. Efficient.” She stepped closer, cautious yet welcoming. “And then we’ll have all the time in the world to study and appreciate what humans never deserved.”</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“The history of the world. The future.”</p>
<p>The most cynical philosophers of the modern period said that any given reploid was just one bad day away from going Maverick.</p>
<p>Meteor was heartened to know that it had taken her clone a couple of weeks.</p>
<p>“Player was being sincere, y’know,” Copy appealed. “When the time comes, I swear I won’t hurt Monitor or any of our friends.”</p>
<p>Meteor blinked. “Monitor?”</p>
<p>“Our partner, stupid. Iron Monitor? We fought the Marias on our date, beat them back, then kissed on the roof while the cameras were rolling? Everybody applauded, even the President!”</p>
<p>Meteor blinked again. The corner of her mouth twitched.</p>
<p>“How many times did we spar with Volt since we woke up?”</p>
<p>Copy blinked just like Meteor did. “Once?”</p>
<p>“What did Deco name her fourth-favorite cactus?”</p>
<p>“She doesn’t keep—”</p>
<p>“What’s the last drink Nouveau ordered?”</p>
<p>“I don’t—”</p>
<p>“What’s Golau’s favorite candy?”</p>
<p>“Who?”</p>
<p>Meteor doubled over laughing.</p>
<p>Copy Meteor Showa and Metal Shark Player give her the same quizzical look.</p>
<p>She straightened up and glared merry daggers, “<em>Ohhhh</em> you’re a little late to the party, sister! Even if I die here, you’ll never in your life fool my friends.”</p>
<p>Copy squinted, making all the facial tics Meteor did when she was puzzled.</p>
<p>One of Player’s monitors shrilled an alert.</p>
<p>“What is it?” Copy didn’t take her eyes off her original.</p>
<p>Player rushed back to his comfy chair. “Impossible. The warp pad next door’s been onlined.”</p>
<p> “Then shut it off.”</p>
<p>Meteor grinned. “Hey, wanna aim me on Bustr?”</p>
<p>Copy tilted her head, eyes still locked.</p>
<p>“This is absurd,” Player muttered, “the lenses are covered in glitter…”</p>
<p>One of the doors bowed inward and glowed red. A rainbow force beam blew through the metal and fries the air as it slammed into the opposite wall and dissolved into sparkly energy strings.</p>
<p>Scatter Seelie fluttered through, lugging an overloaded, dangerously sparking and smoking, underslung minigun cannon. It had rainbow stickers on the barrel.</p>
<p>They dropped the weapon with an ominous clang and cracked their neck back and forth.</p>
<p>“So who’s been messin’ with my friend, like?”</p>
<p>Meteor pointed to Copy. Copy pointed to Meteor.</p>
<p>Skittle buffed their fingers on their chest. “What a predicament. Say, Lefty, how’d your date with Aussie Ironpants go?”</p>
<p>“Poor match,” Meteor answered. “I slapped him.”</p>
<p>Copy’s jaw dropped. Player turned away from the monitors and conjured a boat anchor in his hand.</p>
<p>Skittle cracked their little knuckles with surprisingly realistic popping sounds. “I’m still your official handler. That means I handle <em>all</em> of you, from your killer upgrades to the memory data updates that I deliberately fudged before I ever sent them here. Now what say we slap these jokers down and go home?”</p>
<p>“Sure,” Meteor smirked at her clone. “Let’s see how far I’ve come.”</p>
<p>The tension rose in the four-way staredown. Copy’s lips began to crackle with electricity.</p>
<p>{Stay away from Not-Me,} Meteor cautioned in mind-text, warming up her buster.</p>
<p>Skittle’s skin shimmered a holographic layer. {Support it is.}</p>
<p>Copy snapped up her arm—</p>
<p>“<em>You’re</em> Not-Me.”</p>
<p>—pointed it at Skittle and shot two pairs of Star Salvo missiles.</p>
<p>Copy breathed Exhalation Beam in Meteor’s split-second of shock.</p>
<p>Meteor reacted quickly, dashing just ahead of the lighting streak that threatened to fry her. It lasted for one second – the minimum, <em>So that hasn’t changed</em> – and the instant it did, Meteor returned fire with her full-charge buster shot. Copy caught it in a cone-ray of shimmering darkness that snuffed it out mid-flight as Meteor caught sight of a boat anchor intercepting her path. Meteor punched it aside with a grinding squeal of metal edge versus metal drills.</p>
<p>Player was hovering upright, levitating thrusterless. Skittle had vanished.</p>
<p>Copy fired her own high-powered dash on a collision course with Meteor, a red hi-beam saber in one hand. Breach Jump sent Meteor sailing high over her and the Hand-Drill she fired made a high-pitched keening of matter-chewing grinder cones against Copy’s thick armor.</p>
<p>Player slammed into Meteor in mid-jump, hammerhead-first.</p>
<p>Skittle reappeared in a dazzling flash and blizzard of energy glitter, breaking their stealth with the visual effect of breaking glass. The million glitter bits flew to their hands and empowered their palm projectors with such high energy that it was nearly exotic. They clapped their wrists together and fired a beam of such luminosity that Meteor’s eyes shifted into emergency filter. Player took the hit broadside. The raving strobe of his shields shed rainbows.</p>
<p>Copy spawned four Remote Koi.</p>
<p><em>That cheater</em>.</p>
<p>Meteor spawned her final two.</p>
<p>“Match us up, Skittle!”</p>
<p>They took the hint right away and waved their hand at the drones. With a shimmer of holographic lies, Meteor suddenly had four more.</p>
<p>Copy ejected another red-beam saber from her other forearm, catching it and snapping it alight. “You think I can’t see through that?!”</p>
<p>Her fish opened fire – not lasers but buster rounds.</p>
<p>Meteor set her drones to intercept mode as her Melter heated up. While the holo-double koi swarmed around each other to shuffle the solid ones’ position, their endurance tanked enough plinking shots to let her dodge the others as she dashed to Copy.</p>
<p>Copy freight-trained for her, sabers up for a scissor.</p>
<p>The difference between their dash systems was velocity versus maneuverability. Copy barreled ahead, unable to turn like Meteor could. The agility made the difference as the liquid-blue greatblade clashes with the red one, sending Meteor skidding with a turn out of Copy’s way while blasting a Hinoiki spray over her head.</p>
<p>
  <em>Wait. She had two sabers—</em>
</p>
<p>Copy’s buster fired another cone of darkness at her koi school. The four fakes vanished into static even as her momentum took her onward. Meteor’s gout of flame burned down two of the shineless fish; the others converged fire, no longer confused, but the ginrin showas tanked the mini-buster fire and lasered the drones down. Quality beat quantity.</p>
<p>In a fluid sequence of movements Copy came to a stop, stowed both sabers, formed her buster and fired three Smoke Spikes: one at the ceiling and one at either wall.</p>
<p>Meteor flicked her attention to Player, who was currently engaged in swinging anchors at five Skittles and missing them all as three in the mass harassed him with palm lasers – two fake and one real, not that he could tell which one was real when they hit him. The spiked corrosive-gas canister struck the wall near enough to spray white mist over the combatants; four Skittles didn’t move the air. The genuine article airdashed out of there, but Player had them made. He raised an arm, his hand enveloped in a globe of purple light.</p>
<p>“<em>Hyakkuleg-gah!</em>”</p>
<p>Metal peeled out of the opposite wall and flickered a blue layer resembling the famous Magna Centipede clinging in a ninja-like crouch. The long-dead Maverick swung out six blue-layer shuriken, three and three. Skittle darted about, but two of the stars tagged dead-on and blinked their shields.</p>
<p>“Aigh!” They cried.</p>
<p>Meteor crashed her fish into Player as Copy maintained distance and unloaded Star Salvo missiles.</p>
<p>Breach Jump propelled Meteor over the first two pairs. She spat a rocket and the ceiling spike and its gas <em>whoomped</em> away, combusted. Copy’s third missile pair hit Meteor dead on, big incoming target that she was, but she accepted the blow for the Echo Shield that buffeted Copy back. Copy’s body rang a weird aftershock tone, as if the thickness of her armor only made the sound waves worse.</p>
<p>The twin Showas were face to face, a saber’s length away.</p>
<p>“You hurt them.”</p>
<p>“They were always irritating.”</p>
<p>Copy reached for her stowed saber. Meteor reached for the Zanbato. They both broke the fakeout and moved their busters.</p>
<p>The difference was that Meteor had less armor to move and better joints to move it with.</p>
<p>She scored an uppercut to her clone’s chest with a fist made of drills, shearing off layers of armor that only their shield flash stopped. Copy capitalized on the proximity and lashed out with her red blade, gashing Meteor’s left elbow before her belabored shield battery could kick in and deflect the rest. The blast of Echo Shields resonated through Copy’s armor as Meteor got the heck out of there.</p>
<p>The blast ended in a gentle pop. Meteor’s shield battery had eaten its surplus, keeping only that which had to remain to fail-safe a fatal blow. Which could have been <em>any</em> blow.</p>
<p>Copy was hurt, Player was hurt, Skittle was hurt, but none were in as bad a shape as Meteor. Her left hand was unresponsive. Systems blared in her brain about “SUB-25%.”</p>
<p>She needed a knockout. But Copy could clearly read her text channel.</p>
<p>So she spoke in context code.</p>
<p> “Skittle! Glamour me and <em>release code lock!</em>”</p>
<p>Skittle soared to the ceiling, pointing their palms at her as Player hucked more slow conjured anchors. Two more shapes of herself layered over her skin and noclipped out, perfectly timed to her side-jump to contrive the illusion that she could have been any of them moving out from a single point in space. All three of her fired her Hand-Drill as her evil twin started sparking at the mouth. The Meteor joined her in pivoting on her heel, switching to Frost Bomb and launching three of her last six Frost Bombs.</p>
<p>Copy, still charging, swept the Sun Thief cone across the array of Meteor’s attack – and misjudged the placement. One drill and its connected lines ground a furrow down her arm, which she pulled back in pain under the flash.</p>
<p>Player ignored Skittle and went in for a dive—</p>
<p>Skittle flight-dashed into his path, forming shining spheres in their hands—</p>
<p>"<em>SPARKLEDAMMERUNG!</em>”</p>
<p>Half the room was plunged into a snowglobe of iridescent chaff.</p>
<p>Player dived through one of Meteor’s doubles, came out the other side of the cloud glittering like Christmas and crashed headlong into Copy.</p>
<p>Meteor slung her final Frost Bomb cluster their way. In the tumble of bodies occluded by millions of pinpricks of shining polymer foil, she only stuck one bomb, and Player was the lucky winner. Meteor popped the splash, seizing up his metal hide in a cascade of blue that covered his entire body by surface tension.</p>
<p>Skittle flew out with Meteor and her twin holos. The three Meteors spat a thermite stream, no time to charge, aiming to melt him down.</p>
<p>The thermite caught the slow-floating chaff and trailed black smoke. Copy tackled Player out of its way, aborted the Exhalation Beam and sprayed a Melter shot of her own: low setting but wide-cast, an aerosol of molten metal burning as much glitter as air.</p>
<p>The black and red cloud caught Skittle ablaze. Their light show was for once unintentional.</p>
<p>“Skittle!”</p>
<p>“<em>Eyes forward!</em>” Skittle screamed.</p>
<p>Copy bore down on the solid-matter Meteor, saber in one hand and buster as the other.</p>
<p>Meteor pointed her buster the wrong way. One of her holos aimed directly at Copy.</p>
<p>Panicking, she shot more Salvo missiles at it. Through it. Her gaze darted back to her first guess.</p>
<p>Meteor passed her at full tilt. Her second-to-last drillbit fist ground through Copy’s upper arm and gouged three deep rifts in her back on the way out.</p>
<p>Copy’s shield flash popped like an incandescent bulb. No surplus shield battery power remained to protect her either. She turned her dash as soon as she could, glancing at her limp arm.</p>
<p>Copy clamped her mouth and severed the arm with a slice of her blade. Electricity started dancing across her lips.</p>
<p>Meteor charged her buster, confident that it had a quicker build than her old beam.</p>
<p>“<em>Girtabomb!</em>”</p>
<p><em>What</em>—</p>
<p>To Meteor’s right a blue-skinned homunculus of Chaser Girtabomb in scorpion mode formed out of a patch of magnetically ripped-apart floor, aiming his tail.</p>
<p>A hail of scrap disguised as Denial Vulcan bullets peppered her hull as she escaped. Glitter continued to settle on every available surface.</p>
<p>Skittle glommed onto Player’s broad head and sank their beam switchblade tail into his neck. The shark’s skin flashed – and every flash cascaded directly into the stinger, siphoning energy away.</p>
<p>Player couldn’t move. “Sssseee<em>lieee!</em>”</p>
<p>Skittle’s face twisted into impish, <em>devilish</em> triumph.</p>
<p>“Just speaking your language, Maverick.”</p>
<p>Player’s body glowed at the seams, shot a light show of its own and collapsed into a fatal rolling explosion.</p>
<p>The Maverick expired as Meteor and Copy Meteor stared each other down. Meteor’s buster and Copy’s Exhalation Beam resonated crescendos of building power.</p>
<p>Meteor knew there was only ever one problem with her old mighty lightning-beam attack. The firing cycle took so much power, it required her to hold still for at least the first second.</p>
<p>Meteor shot at Copy’s eye level and rode her racer-worthy footpads on a wide-circling intercept course. Lacking shields, Copy had a choice to make: angle up the beam and blow the shot away, or keep her line of sight and chase her original with it.</p>
<p>Copy took the hit. Half of her facial armor layer peeled away, exposing the mechanisms around her eye.</p>
<p>The beam chased Meteor faster than she could escape.</p>
<p>A rainbow beam from across the room intersected it. The clashing energies bent the lines. The lightning beam bucked.</p>
<p>It boiled away Meteor’s upper armor layer from her earcap to the base of her tail. Had it shot true, it would have gone through her chest.</p>
<p>She closed the distance. Her drillhand, her last shot of her last VWES weapon, revved up. She came in low and swung high.</p>
<p>Copy’s good eye widened, disbelieving, infuriated. The beam was on cooldown. She thrust her red beam saber.</p>
<p>Meteor’s drill ate her hand, her hilt, punched into the vents along her neck and chewed up what lay beneath.</p>
<p>Copy Meteor Showa stared into oblivion, cheek to cheek with her original.</p>
<p>“You… know I’m… right…”</p>
<p>Meteor pressed her eye to Copy’s mangled one and glared into her fading spark of life.</p>
<p>“You’re a shitty copy.”</p>
<p>Meteor kicked her off her arm and fired the drills at the same time. The Maverick staggered, toppled, took what felt like ten years to fall… and began her fatal detonation.</p>
<p>Meteor’s exertions caught up to her all at once. She collapsed to her knees, watching her old self leave the world a better place – for it had one less Maverick in it.</p>
<p>The sound and fury of the explosions faded with their last light. Meteor dropped back on her tail, sitting in the awkward knees-in heels-out splay of many a big-shinned reploid.</p>
<p>Glitter was covering the floor. Meteor looked at her hand. It was sparkly and iridescent.</p>
<p>Skittle fluttered to her side, scorched and marred from what abuse they took. They sat down next to her, stilling their wings and evaporating them.</p>
<p>“This glitter’s never coming out, is it.”</p>
<p>“Sure it will! It’ll take off your paint, though. Maybe you can get a new pattern, like?”</p>
<p>Meteor gave a tired chuckle.</p>
<p>Skittle thumbed over to the consoles, “I’m gonna, just, y’know, take down the signal blockade. If that’s okay.”</p>
<p>“Wait, I thought my Bustr post got through. How’d you get here if the interdiction wasn’t down?”</p>
<p>“‘Cuz I’m <em>me</em>. Plus this is a Sixteenth outpost. I have certain backdoors, and when they didn’t ping that you landed safe on Laguz, I got suspicious.”</p>
<p>“You checked up on me?”</p>
<p>“You expected me not to?”</p>
<p>“I <em>expect</em> that Proteus doesn’t know about your backdoors.”</p>
<p>“Not unless you snitch.”</p>
<p>Meteor smiled, exhausted. “On you? Never.”</p>
<p>Skittle fluttered back up, touching her cheek on their way past.</p>
<p>A scrap of armor lay by Meteor’s knee. She had no idea to which Meteor Showa it belonged, but she took it anyway. A treasure to anchor the moment in her shelf museums.</p>
<p>“Yo, Meteor. We’re up.”</p>
<p>
  <em>How long have they been calling me by my first name…?</em>
</p>
<p>Her right hand tried to lift, setting off a litany of warning bells in her head. She powered through and touched her earcap.</p>
<p>“Meteor Showa to Fifth Communications.”</p>
<p>Meteor paused for effect, not so tired that she couldn’t add a splash of drama…</p>
<p>“Have I got a story for you.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0025"><h2>25. Shooting Star</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Time passed. The exact span of years was difficult to personally conceptualize, for how busy they had been and how many horrors had arisen.</p>
<p>The Earth Crisis. The Cyberspace-fueled Nightmare Incident. The decline of the Maverick Hunters; the rise of mercenaries. The return of the Hunters as an institution. The Giga City crisis.</p>
<p>Cyberspace fueled the metamorphic utility of the New Generation Reploids, the Cyber Elves, and all phases in between.</p>
<p>Meteor made new friends. She lost others. Some left of their own accord, while others fell in the line of duty. All throughout, however, one stayed by her side. They were fighting by her side even then, and she wouldn’t have had it any other way.</p>
<p>The Mother Elf had gone rogue. Doctor Weil had corrupted Her with his invincible champion at his side and had come to strike at the heart of the Maverick Hunters. But that was miles away. The drama unfolding at yet another turning point of history failed to preclude the carnage around her. There and then, the united forces of the Maverick Hunter Fourth Overland Units had taken the field against the horde.</p>
<p>Commander Meteor Showa of the Veracruz Fourth Overland Unit held the line at the apocalypse.</p>
<p>It was all she could do to stay alive, but darn it, she had a responsibility.</p>
<p>Her beloved partner, “codename Puck” to the Mavericks, was tasked to wiping out the rank and file. They scoured the battlefield with great raking force beams, boiling away enemy soldiers in pillars of shining fey moonlight. Mighty mace-swinging Metarooks withstood it for no more than a second while lesser corrupted groundpounders simply disappeared. Violence was the only language the opposing army understood, and Skittle was having a marvelous time lecturing them.</p>
<p>And Meteor herself?</p>
<p>She breathed a sheer firestorm of bright thermite droplets, lighting up the night with the flash of the Golem’s shields. She double-jumped up to its arm, and again to its face, slashing her infamous greatsaber <em>Waterfall Breaker </em>down its side. The front, pale blue half of the triangular blade spread the cryomer for the golden back half to thermal-shock through even the Golem’s mighty hide. The monster started exploding even before she landed.</p>
<p>Its identical partner hovered menacingly.</p>
<p>She cracked out four Gaia Seeds at its joints. Ripping cracking genesis constricted the colossal mechaniloid in cyberwood roots of miraculous density – an impossible feat for Variable Weapon Emulation technology of even five years prior, despite the DNA synergy from Million Mangrove.</p>
<p>Meteor leveled her buster and shot a thin red beam. The laser-point whined against a fat root for a second before immolating the entire wooden tentacle structure.</p>
<p>Skittle laughed, idly blasting down the last of the enemy column. Their three long asymmetrical ponytails flapped in the heat wave of Meteor’s attack. “You’re a force of nature, you are!”</p>
<p>“Flatterer. Next hostiles?”</p>
<p>“Everywhere, like. Nearest cluster’s a block ahead. Follow me!”</p>
<p>“Commander!” Nouveau’s slightly staticky, ever-proud voice bellowed in her ear as she chased Skittle on continuous dash. “Andrew’s company is getting surrounded, but I’m above Halcyon Avenue and I have eyes on <em>That Feathered Bitch!</em>”</p>
<p>Meteor’s face froze, struck mute at the unbidden image of Deco’s smiling face.</p>
<p>“Orders?!” Nouveau practically begged through two shouted syllables.</p>
<p>Of all the Hunters in the field, of all the servants of Doctor Weil, Nouveau had encountered Stillwater Phasian. It was perfect. It was <em>justice</em>. Meteor remembered Deco’s innocent laughter, her relentless friendship, the radiant sun of her love and the black hole left in her passing. The whole universe had dimmed when the Maverick pheasant killed her wife. There was only one order Meteor could possibly give.</p>
<p>“Now or never, Major! <em>Put her down!</em>”</p>
<p>Meteor stopped her charge to look out toward Halcyon Avenue in the distance. Dotted lines of heavy buster fire warped and wiggled under a sudden severe gravitational lensing. Meteor could only hope he ripped the traitor to atoms as she caught up to Skittle’s position.</p>
<p>“Andrew!” She shouted a little too hotly over the struggling comms. “Nouveau’s engaging Stillwater Phasian, your position’s in peril, pull out!”</p>
<p>“But Fram’s company isn’t back yet!” The overwhelmed yet determined lieutenant objected. “Bakker and Shock aren’t responding to comms!”</p>
<p>Meteor plowed through Kerberos mechaniloids flooding the streets and Crush Rollers chewing it up.</p>
<p>
  <em>Of course Frambuesa would freaking run off, she’s been a berserker ever since—</em>
</p>
<p>Volt’s face flashed into her mind. Her husband had been strong and stoic to the very end, no matter how often he clashed with Skittle and Deco’s exuberance. His last word to her in the Maverick stronghold on Luna had been a smile.</p>
<p>
  <em>She was his best student.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I have to trust she knows what she’s doing.</em>
</p>
<p>“The Raspberries are more mobile than your team!” Meteor replied. “Get your people out of there!”</p>
<p>“We’re infantry, Commander, we can hold out!”</p>
<p>“You stay in that sector and you’re <em>dead</em>, Andrew Martin!” Skittle shouted over the thrum-buzzing of their own deathbeams. “Don’t you <em>dare</em> make me break it to your girlfriend!”</p>
<p>“Um—! Understood, Your Highness! Pulling out!” Andrew broke contact.</p>
<p>Meteor rushed over to Skittle, backed up to their fluttering iridescent wings and added buster fire to the fray. Tides of vehicular units attempted to overrun their position and were annihilated for their trouble.</p>
<p>“He has a girlfriend?”</p>
<p>“Met her last week! Human!”</p>
<p>“Cuter than you?”</p>
<p>“Mathematically impossible, like!”</p>
<p>The field was cleared inside the next minute. Smoke wafted from collapsed buildings. The pavement glowed red from the heat of the barrages. It was a shame. Whenever she and Skittle had a spare afternoon off, they liked teleporting out to that corner of Geneva.</p>
<p>“Commander, more Golems inbound!” Atajo broadcasted. “Point zero-five-five-three-bee!”</p>
<p>“That’s us, Meteor,” Skittle brushed dust off their arm. By rank and social convention, they were the only one left in the Hunters who called her by her first name.</p>
<p>“More for us, less pressure on the heroes,” she returned a tired smile.</p>
<p>They flew to face her, instantly attentive and respectfully concerned. “Come come, my wildfire, none of that now. We’re plenty heroic, we are. They’ll sure remember us after the parade I’m gonna host!”</p>
<p>“They’d better,” she chuckled. “And if they don’t, if this all goes sideways… I promise I will.”</p>
<p>“You’d better,” they playfully booped her cheek.</p>
<p>The column of walking pyramids approached through the smoke and flame of the city.</p>
<p>
  <em>Now’s as good a time as any…</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor took her partner by the hands.</p>
<p>“No matter how this day turns out… I’m so glad you’re here with me, Skittle. You always were. Thank you so much.”</p>
<p>Each pupil of her partner’s bright purple eyes sparkled, outshining the lamps of the world.</p>
<p>“You’re so goddamned Asian. Say what you mean, <em>fy nghariad</em>.”</p>
<p>“I love you, Scatter Seelie,” she whispered.</p>
<p>Skittle fluttered closer and pecked her a kiss. “To the sky and back, my shooting star. Now let’s go save the heckin’ world again.”</p>
<p>The Golems arrayed to fire.</p>
<p>The Hunters held the line.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Victory was bought at too high a cost, too dear a consequence. But time marched on. The years fell like rain over the wreckage of the world.</p>
<p>Survival was paramount. Neo Arcadia became the last legitimate power in the world, sheltering all who remained… or at least all those who believed in peace.</p>
<p>She still believed in it, though lately her faith had been shaken.</p>
<p>She was known as Meteor Tricolore, and on that day she was tracking some of the very last Mavericks in the world. Oceania Sapphiren, her friend and rival for the praise of Fairy Leviathan, had joined her to investigate a long-ago-depleted, longer-ago-flooded energen cave off the coast of Venezuela.</p>
<p>Lifetimes ago, Meteor had fought a Maverick there.</p>
<p>“A paranoid geologist who retired his workers and set up an earthquake machine,” she explained, swimming in mer-mode for the efficiency of it. “Not viral, not evil, just off his rocker. I hated having to put him down. Looking back, I think he could’ve been reformed if only I was stronger.”</p>
<p>“You did the right thing,” Sapphiren said. “We needed the energen, he needed killing. Don’t dwell on it.”</p>
<p>Sapphiren was an old hand at justifying any and every retirement action. She had even helped Meteor on a mission or two, back when they both had different bodies and names to match. They saved each others’ lives long before Neo Arcadia came to be. The enduring acquaintanceship made Meteor reluctant to gainsay her, but…</p>
<p>“I can’t help it,” Meteor anxiously twisted a long whisker in her draconic claws. “I mean, that last cell we found…”</p>
<p>“They’re Mavericks, Meteor,” Sapphiren swam past, her feather-jets working as well underwater as they did in the air. Meteor undulated her scaly three-color tail faster.</p>
<p>“They were civ models, Saph. X didn’t need the likes of us to retire them.”</p>
<p>“Orders are orders. We haven’t lasted this long by getting squeamish on the job.”</p>
<p>“<em>The Job</em> is retiring Mavericks, not people.”</p>
<p>“Come on,” Sapphiren punched her arm, “you know how it works. If they weren’t Mavericks, they wouldn’t live outside Neo Arcadia. X – <em>X Himself!</em> – brought in everyone worth bringing. And if Father Everlasting Peace draws the line, I’m sure as hell enforcing it.”</p>
<p>Meteor rubbed her scale-patterned arm. “There’s still a line between retirement and murder. Or at least there’s supposed to be.”</p>
<p>“Mavericks are all the same,” Sapphiren grinned, “all they understand is violence. Or at least that’s what your partner always says. Now <em>there’s</em> a good Hunter. Whenever Leviathan calls me in for tea, I always bring up what a <em>good</em> influence they are on you. You’re two of a kind…”</p>
<p>Meteor clenched her jaw, but kept her teeth from showing. Skittle – she still called them that, privately – had been distant lately. She knew better than to ask about the operations of the Cutting Shadow Squadron, but she had become an expert in reading her partner’s moods. Lately the notorious archfey had been brooding like they hadn’t since after Weil Day…</p>
<p>“Don’t talk about them with her.”</p>
<p>Sapphiren gave an exaggerated shrug, shaking her head, “I’m doing them a favor by salvaging their reputation. Rumor has it that they’re going soft. <em>Spectrum Unseelie</em>, of all people! What <em>ever</em> could have gotten them to—”</p>
<p>“Don’t talk about them with me either,” Meteor snapped.</p>
<p>“Heh-heh. Consider it dropped. Do your thing, Tri, we’re almost there.”</p>
<p>And right she was. The seas had risen substantially, even greater than in the twenty-second century, but ahead of them lay the target zone, same as it ever was. Meteor brought her claws to her belly and opened her hatch. Twelve serpentine dragon drones slithered out to case the cave. They snaked in, six to the main aperture and six to seek out alternates.</p>
<p>They found hidden entries behind holo-fields. Escape routes.</p>
<p>Right away she detected reploid signatures and the weak pings of past-century heavy machinery. It was a shoddy operation scavenging the crumbs of the long-depleted cave. Scans from the infiltrator drones revealed early-warning systems in the water.</p>
<p>The drones slipped past, giving her a closer read to pick up even the minutest energen cells.</p>
<p>Forty-one assorted buster rifles and sidearms. Eighteen reploid signals, three mechaniloids. None of them were high-power. They were civilians, and that was their home.</p>
<p>
  <em>Just like…</em>
</p>
<p>The situation was exactly like the mission that had shaken her faith.</p>
<p>
  <em>They’re dead and they don’t know it. I’m just the messenger.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I have to…</em>
</p>
<p>A voice of kindness echoed in her ancient memory.</p>
<p>
  <em>“Even if these plants die, even if I die tomorrow, even if we all die tomorrow, I’m giving them love right now. It’s the most important thing I could do for them, and for me. No matter how the future turns out, it happens in a world where I did that.”</em>
</p>
<p>Meteor was a Maverick Hunter. Then and always. She had a responsibility.</p>
<p>
  <em>“You shouldn’t focus on the future so hard, whether you see it as a place that can only be better or a place that can’t possibly be better. Otherwise you might not see it at all… and the things you love, the things you’re responsible for, will wither for lack of you.”</em>
</p>
<p>“Anything there?” Sapphiren asked, ignorant to the turmoil roiling through her supposed friend.</p>
<p>Meteor closed her eyes.</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Meteor lay by the windmill cliff to watch the morning caravans come in, her black hair spilling all around her.</p>
<p>It seemed like more and more arrived at Area Zero every day, thanks to Ciel and Neige sending out more beacons... which would have been a heck of a trial without the technical assistance of the second-bravest reploid Meteor could name.</p>
<p>They sat by her side, cross-legged, still shorter than her after yet another body. The two of them were both uncannily young in the face, per the modern style of reploid design, but the continuity of their beings showed through. She always kept her black, white, and red-orange colors, just as they always kept their white hair and glittery freckles, and their relative sizes hadn’t changed in years. Each was the perfect size for the other to hug.</p>
<p>There were only so many conversations that an ancient couple could have before they favored silence over speech. The two of them had long since passed that point and summarily ignored it.</p>
<p>“Mornin’, <em>f’anwylyd</em>.”</p>
<p>“Good morning yourself. How’s the coverage today?”</p>
<p>“Spotty over the old headquarters, per usual.”</p>
<p>She sat up. “Cyber-elf interference?”</p>
<p>“Yeah. They’re still putterin’ about outta sight of all but those with eyes to see ‘em, the poor things. They’ll be there in their own little layer of afterlife, they will, data-souls without bodies – until the very end.”</p>
<p>“How long will that be?”</p>
<p>Skittle idly picked at their earcap. It was about the only physical feature left that visually set common reploids apart from humans. “Well, some right <em>nuts</em> say that X – the real one – set up some grand plan. <em>Supposedly</em> the C-axis will autonomously shunt Dynamic Neural Array data into itself ‘til the heat death of the universe. Kingdom come. But even <em>they</em> admit nobody living could actually <em>access</em> all that data once the last node shuts down. Might not be long, really. Not many Cyberspace nodes left, after… after…”</p>
<p>They stared into the middle distance. Meteor side-hugged them closer; they clung to her arm for a moment, steadying. She gave them all the time they needed.</p>
<p>“World’s still reeling from one less,” they rocked in place a little. “One less. I don’t think I like <em>less</em> anymore. Not after our little sojourn.”</p>
<p>Meteor gasped as quietly as she could. Skittle, Scatter, Spectrum, her partner of many names, hadn’t spoken about their time in the wasteland with her ever since the two of them arrived in Area Zero.</p>
<p>“I don’t…” they clung to her like they were going to blow away. “We don’t deserve this, do we? This place? This peace? After… after all the things we did. We belong in the empty. Don’t we?”</p>
<p>Meteor brushed her fingers over their hair. It was much shorter than hers, and in a peppy bob style. “That’s the thing about an apocalypse, Skittle. It wipes the slate clean. You should know, you’ve lived through a few.”</p>
<p>“Not without you I haven’t,” they pressed her hand to their cherubic cheek. “I never would’ve left Neo Arcadia if not for you. Never. I’d’ve walked the dark forever, I would. That’s what scares me, like. How much I needed you.”</p>
<p>“I know.” And she did. And she knew they knew she did.</p>
<p>Skittle sniffled and wiped away a tear. “There’s no slate clean enough, but we’ve gotta start somewhere, we do. S’pose we could do worse for a spot than smack in the middle of goddamn Eden.”</p>
<p>“Now there’s the optimist I fell for,” she teasingly ruffled their hair. “Just think! Once more caravans come in, we’ll have enough people for a proper city. I could teach. You could start a bar. That is, when you’re not busy being the Sysop Fairy of Area Zero. Though we really should think of a better name for the place…”</p>
<p>Skittle smiled in spite of themself. “Oh you. How in the world do you keep lookin’ forward?”</p>
<p>Meteor gazed out to the horizon, to the slow and steady reclamation of the world. “The same way I do anything important. One centimeter at a time.”</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Few remembered how long it had been. The accounting of years was muddled after the fall of Ragnarok. Everyone counted from the Foundation calendar – the calendar created by the Sage Trinity.</p>
<p>The difference between humans and reploids had become academic. Cybernetic augmentation for one race, mortality for the other. The dream of Thomas Light, He for whom the first among the Sages was named, had finally come to pass. Native and artificial life were closer than ever before; the only possible next step, so said the bright-eyed futurists, was to truly unify as a single carbon-based species.</p>
<p>Meteor doubted she would live to see the day it happened, but she was content with that. She had lived a life fuller than most, and longer than any that yet walked the earth.</p>
<p>She knew how old she was. Nobody else seemed to, and if they did they didn’t care. Perhaps the information had become the rarest of all treasures: one kept only in her head. All that the others at the orphanage knew was that she was ancient and settling down, enjoying the twilight of the world. Modern bio-tech upgrades had ensured that, like any reploid, one of those days her time would simply run out. She didn’t mind. She had died before, once upon a time, and all it had done was start her on a new adventure.</p>
<p>“Nana Mimi!” The children called for her. “Giro says dinner’s ready!”</p>
<p>“I’ll be along,” she waved from her chair. Her three-color, koi-patterned hair was an eyebrow-raising anachronism in that day and age, but the Sages’ regulations allowed elderly reploids to keep such affectations.</p>
<p>The rules also allowed for her cosmetic tattoos. She was quite lucky to find a good artist. He had perfectly rendered the angles of the ram on her right arm, the early twentieth-century tower on her left arm, the florid arch across her collarbones, and the iridescence of the moth wings on her back.</p>
<p>Dinner passed with the boisterous disorder of family. Her adopted son Girouette, whom she had saved from a Maverick attack a lifetime ago, had really paid it forward. The children at the table were all good kids, orphans to a one, each with a sad story that began with Mavericks. One of Meteor’s favorites was the youngest and newest, one who lost their mother to an attack at a fair just a month prior. Meteor wished she had been there. She wished she could’ve been there for all of them, like back in the old days.</p>
<p>Out in her chair again, after the children were tucked in and she had given her grown son a good-night hug, she gazed upon the great sea of stars and reflected on her life. If she had been here or there – if she had done this or that differently – maybe the world’s troubles wouldn’t have compounded like they did. There was no way of knowing. Maybe if she were a few decades younger… well, then she wouldn’t have been herself. Experience shaped who she was.</p>
<p>Age was a luxury that afforded time to wonder, but sitting on her own porch, she wondered why she was worrying at all.</p>
<p>Nothing she did had ever been wasted on the ones who had the most to gain from it.</p>
<p>She had a good run. She left a good legacy. She was born at exactly the right time to see the greatest events in history, to serve with the greatest heroes in history, to meet everyone she had… ever…</p>
<p>A peaceful prickling sensation slowed her thoughts.</p>
<p>That was how it always began, they said.</p>
<p>
  <em>Well, heck.</em>
</p>
<p>A tiny, bodiless pair of moth wings fluttered before her eyes.</p>
<p>A tear rolled down her smiling cheek.</p>
<p>“Sorry I stayed late. Had to close up…”</p>
<p>Sound faded...</p>
<p>A streak of starlight crossed the Milky Way.</p>
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